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Photo: Ministry of Crab
From across the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Crab will drop its anchor at Singapore’s Dempsey Hill on July 3. The popular Colombo-based crab institution, which is ranked No. 77 on this year’s Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants extended list, has chosen Singapore to house its sixth outlet. The restaurant chain also has branches in Bangkok, Shanghai, Chengdu, Mumbai and the Maldives.
With its location in Dempsey Hill, Ministry of Crab will go head to head with other well-loved local seafood restaurants such as Jumbo Seafood and Long Beach.
Ministry of Crab is known for its dishes with mud crabs caught from the waters of Sri Lanka. At its Singapore outpost, the mud crabs will range in size from 500g to over 2 kg. Diners can choose for the crabs to be cooked in a variety of ways: baked, steamed, wok-fried with garlic chilli, or even stewed in curry.
The Ministry of Crab’s garlic chili crab (Photo: Ministry of Crab)
To complement the crabs, diners can also choose from a variety of other seafood dishes, featuring prawns, clams, and oysters. Another notable crustacean of the restaurant are its giant freshwater prawns. These prawns range in size from 100g to over 500g.
Chef Munidasa holding a mud crab and giant freshwater prawn (Photo: Ministry of Crab)
Since the restaurant has a no-freezer policy, all the seafood that it serves will be made from the freshest catch from Sri Lanka, following the recipes of chef-restaurateur Dharshan Munidasa, who draws on his dual heritage and combines Sri Lankan ingredients with Japanese culinary philosophies.
Chef Munidasa (Photo: Ministry of Crab)
Munidasa started the Ministry of Crab in 2011, together with his friends, cricketing legends Mahela Jayawardena and Kumar Sangakkara. Despite never having gone to culinary school, Munidasa is the chef behind the only Sri Lanka’s restaurants to have made it onto Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. The Ministry of Crab has placed among Asia’s best 50 Restaurants from 2015 to 2022, and was featured on their long list over the past two years. He also runs Nihonbashi, a Japanese restaurant in Colombo.
