The Oyster and Crab Restaurant, 100AM

As the name implies, The Oyster and Crab Restaurant (100 Tras Street, #01-08, 100AM, tel : +65 6543 6507) focuses on recipes that make use of oysters and crabs. The food is Japanese and they do stuff like pasta, sushi, sashimi, teppanyaki, tempura and limited kushiyaki. The crabs I hear, are flown in twice a week from Hokkaido. But that wasn't really what we had been eyeing. We were looking forward to being oyster-fied by dinner. So we ordered their oyster set which sounded pretty good on menu.

To fast forward into retrospect, the oyster set simply wasn't oyster-ly enough for me. Portions were a little small. The quality was decent enough that if portions were more generous, I would have been impressed.

First item up were a couple of oysters. The left, which came nude was from Hiroshima. Large, juicy and laced with brine and some sweetness. The other which if you noticed, was not served on shell came with spicy grated daikon, spring onions and ponzu. Both were pretty tasty in their own ways.

Following was a mini plate of sashimi and oyster zushi done two ways. The fried one wasn't so good. I couldn't even tell that it was oyster. The raw oyster gunkan simply tasted like the ponzu-less version of the previous starter with rice and seaweed. I was hoping that the maguro would be good but I guess it was just simply what they could fit into the cost of the set. Likewise for the shake, it should have been belly meat. Not the regular leaner cut. Where's the pride eh? Apparently absent. In this country, that's quite understandable. So nothing much to look forward to folks.

Then came an agedashi tofu strapped by seaweed with a fried oyster and a tempura-ed crab leg. This was very nice. The starchy broth was flavoured by a light shoyu and bits of crab meat. This dish turned out comforting. 

This onsen tamago was not part of the set. It was ordered separately and came very late. The tamago was certainly ugly looking. But the molten yolk on the inside with the sweet uni laced with ponzu together was almost orgasmic.

And then fried rice. Not enough bits of oyster in them. It was relegated to being very ordinary and could have floored people simply with more oysters and salt. Them oysters are the point to this set and the theme of the restaurant isn't it?  Why such a half fucked effort? 

Last food item was an oyster dobinmushi.

There was an oyster in the broth, but no oyster flavours. The lonely oyster was tasty though. Restaurant also needs to be more conscientious about things like serving dried out lime.

Not Yubari King for sure.

It's mixed feelings about the place here. I'm not saying I'm never coming back, I just thought that with some small adjustments, it could have been pretty good value. Not against the idea of giving them another go sometime.