Ever since I got here, people have been telling me I need to try hairy crab. Kunshan’s hairy crabs from Yangcheng Lake are famous all over China for being magically delicious, and it’s late autumn, which means they are in season, particularly the females.
Today, my ship full of hairy crabs came in, in the form of a delightful colleague who took me out for dinner. She took me to a little spot in a strip mall with no proper doors and with an entire side wall full of crab tanks.
We ordered a crapton of crabs, which Janet told me would not be enough for a meal, so our plan was to carry the crabs to another restaurant, where we would eat the crabs and also order more food. But first, we got to pick our crabs.
Come to Mama you yummy things.
Once the crab man (he probably has a more proper title) caught the crabs, he tied their legs down…
And then threw them in the pot to boil. (See my Instagram story for all the gory moving pictures.)
We took the bucket o’ crab to a restaurant down the street.
Ok, so, crabs are delicious. But you have to work really hard to get the good stuff out of them. No hammers or tools of any kind– just your fingers and chopsticks. It only took us like one crab each to abandon the chopsticks and start using our fingers to dig crab meat out, and then basically sucking on the poor things to get any remaining bits out. But oh my god they’re good.
I did suffer an injury. Crabs don’t want to be eaten, and thus they are full of spiky parts. One such spiky part sliced my thumb open.
Worth it.
Then we ate a bunch of other stuff, too. Janet tells me this is not hot pot, but it’s what I would have guessed hot pot would look like. So I guess I still have to try hot pot, but this stuff was pretty darn good. None of it was labeled in English. I am told I ate some stomach. (It was chewy.)
It was such a fun night, and I am the luckiest to have met such lovely, wonderful people who will do things like this for me. Thank you, Janet!
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