Guilty Pleasures at the Red Crab - Alimango House

The Red Crab in Lucky Chinatown Mall

RATING OVERVIEW

Place:
Taste:
Service:
Value for Money: 
Overall Experience:

Last Sunday (January 6, 2013) , we decided to dine out as a family, and explore something different or something we haven't eaten for a while. And since we were only a few blocks away from Lucky Chinatown Mall, we decided to check out the restaurants there.

I am thrilled to share with you how great Lucky Chinatown Mall is! It has several stores to shop in, and there are a lot of restaurants to dine in. This was, again, contrary to my initial "judgement" (Why do I keep on making the wrong impression? Well, I guess I know the answer to that. Stop judging by the cover! ) Moving on, among the wide choices of restaurants, my mom suggested the Red Crab. This was primarily because we haven't had crabs for a long time. So, let's get started! Here's how the menu looks like:

The Red Crab: Alimango House

And here's how the place looks like:

The Red Crab in Lucky Chinatown

The overall design brings a cozy ambiance that adds to the pleasurable dining experience, although I would have appreciated it more if the place was more spacious. Anyway, enough of that; let's proceed with the food! Hooray!


For our appetizer, we decided to have this salad, Crab and Mango Salad (pardon me for not remembering the exact name of this entry as well as the price):

Crab and Mango Salad

This Crab and Mango Salad was really a great starter since it perfectly served its purpose of boosting our appetite for the night! The mangoes were certainly fresh and the crab really added some great texture and flavor to the entire dish, complimented by the distinct taste of vinaigrette.

For the soup , we had the Halaan in Ginger Wansuy Broth (P135) which is good for 2-3 persons per order:

Halaan in Ginger Wansuy Broth

Although I find the flavor stronger than it should, this soup definitely warmed our hearts out and gave our taste buds some excitement. Note: And if you are craving for a refreshing taste of seafood, you should really try this one.

Now, let's proceed to the real deal (what they are famous for) - the crab! And for the first crab dish, we had the Crab Maritess!

Crab Maritess of Red Crab

Note: The crabs are at about P140+ per 100kg. And normally, one order will be at about 1kg. This is good for 2-3 person only. Hence, that is about P1,400+ already per order.

I personally enjoyed this dish because of the distinct taste of roasted garlic that blended well with the flavorful buttery sauce of the crab. This is the reason why this was my favorite dish for the night!

For us Filipinos, dinner wouldn't be complete without rice. So, here it is - Binagoongang Rice of the Red Crab!

Binagoongang Rice

I will no longer share much about this dish (Is this even considered as a dish?), but all I can say is that it tasted pretty good and that it heavily complemented the tortang talong (you'll be reading more about this below). 

Seafood Tortang Talong with Aligue Cream Sauce (P198):

Seafood Tortang Talong with Aligue Cream Sauce

Boo-yeah! I was really amazed by how this tortang talong was able to bring out a lot of flavors. Perhaps this was attributable to the unique aligue cream sauce that came along with it. I can't describe much how the sauce tasted, but it really was so tasty and unique. I've never tasted anything like it before. Wait, now I'm doubting whether Crab Maritess was my favorite for the night or this one. Hmmmm...

Seizing the opportunity, we decided to have another order of a crab dish. So, we had this one - the Classic Crab Adobo.

Classic Crab Adobo of Red Crab

This one was less exciting than the earlier one (the Crab Maritess). But don't get me wrong; this one still tasted great! I believe that this is because the crab itself was really fresh which you will be able to tell through the taste. 

Okay, now that you were able to read through my comments on the food. What now? 

If you'll check out my rating again, you may wonder why my (our) overall experience is at 1.0 out of 5. Well, that's practically because we had a terrible experience during that time. Unexpectedly, my sister saw a foreign object floating in the service water they poured in her glass. She wasn't a hundred percent sure about this, but she said she saw a wriggler (kiti-kiti). Then, we called up the waiter to check it out, and he said that it was just a wood splinter. My sister was really doubtful about it, and still believed it was a mosquito larva. But even if this was the case, we decided to shrug it off and just enjoyed the food (yes, since the dishes were really irresistibly delicious). Then after we have finished up 90% of the food, my dad called for a water refill. And guess what? My sister was right! It was indeed a wriggler (my dad was able to identify it because it was larger than the first one)!

We were practically disgusted by it, and stopped eating. I'll no longer share the rest, but that's the gist of it. And also, I'm not writing this to damage the reputation of Red Crab. I just want to share with you what happened. I know this may be an isolated case, but we found it really disappointing since it was our first time to eat in Red Crab. If this didn't happen, we will surely return back for more of those great dishes!

So, there you go! I hope you enjoyed browsing through this blog post. It was nice updating this blog despite my MOD3 (accounting majors).

PS: I'm not saying that you shouldn't eat here, but just be cautious. *wink*

The Red Crab
2/F Lucky Chinatown Mall
Reina Regente St.
Binondo, Manila

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