Crabs at Kian Seng Seafood

Since last November, the man has been getting hives weekly. It happens too often to be brushed off. The hives are super itchy and appear in large swathes on his body, arms and everywhere. He's having a mild allergic reaction to something. Dunno what the triggers are though. It used to be caused by heat (perspiration) or friction (fabric against skin). Now, it's likely caused by food or alcohol. We tried food trials and did a process of elimination, to no conclusive triggers. 

He couldn't be bothered to get an allergy test for now since it can be resolved by popping an antihistamine. Whatever it is, he didn't want to take a chance to have histamines flowing in his blood before his first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. So he skipped alcohol altogether and went vegetarian for three days before the scheduled shot and weeks leading to up to the second shot. 

But first, he gorged on some serious shellfish. The friends merrily indulged him for a last-minute impromptu dinner. It was a first visit for all of us to Kian Seng Seafood. I was tickled to see that its customers took over the whole food center on a weekend. It's sited within an industrial park, so the other stalls were closed on weekends, and obviously no one else minded. The food isn't the best, a tad heavy on oil, cornstarch and likely MSG, but it would do. It's decent enough if it's a short drive away from where you are. 

The crazy people ordered blood cockles without knowing how it would appear. Laughed when it arrived. It was the smallest portion but it came with shells tightly shut, so they still needed work in opening it up. These cockles no longer dripped with blood. I believe most restaurants wouldn't dare to do raw and bloody cockles anymore. 

Kian Seng Seafood blanched the cockles, for sure, and they were drenched in a tad too much soy sauce, a bit of garlic bits and a bit of chillies. So it was kinda salty slurping them because of the soy sauce. It was fun, bu there wasn't anything terribly exciting about it. This doesn't beat Famous Kitchen's fantastic version. Very few restaurants could beat that presentation and piquant dressing. 

I was greedy and ordered the kong bak bao. (Asian braised pork belly sliders. Hahah. Do you have a better name for it?) The buns were nicely steamed. The braised pork was dark and salty, but good gawwd, the layer of belly fat is MADNESS. I cannot. They somehow found the fattiest pieces of pork belly for this dish. I could only eat two pieces of that and feel the fats float around my arteries. 

These people love their crabs. So they had two crabs — one in chilli gravy and one steamed with stir-fried tanghoon. One crab is about 900g, and the other about 700g. Quite big. I only ate a bit of the pincer and nothing much. I dared not. They ate it all clean. I blinked at how much they could put away. Hahaha. At $73 per kg, the prices of crabs are pretty decent, comparable to other seafood zi char restaurants. This meal was a total cholesterol bomb. OMG. Luckily we took charcoal pills, probiotics and antihistamines before the meal. Old already, must take preventive measures before doing a meal like this!