Here in My An, Da Nang, Vietnam, we have almost any sort of cuisine you can imagine but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is very good.
This next restaurant caught me by surprise because although we have a lot of seafood over this way, you don't often see ANY Alaskan King crap legs on offer because Alaska is really far away and unless I am mistaken, that is the only place in the world where those kind of crabs live. I've been in Asia for quite a while and I've only seen them on menus a couple of times so I was a little concerned that they would either be lying about having them, or they would be terrible.
I'm here to tell you that they were exceeded my expectations, that is for sure.
This tray of stuff was split between 3 people and while it wasn't a gut-buster, it was enough food for 3 people. There are clams, abalone, sausage, corn, and of course crab legs in there. Oh there was mussels and crawfish as well.
I have had interactions with craw/cray fish in the past and the same gripe I had with them back then is still true now.
This baby lobster looking fella looks a little bit scary but there's nothing to be afraid of. You only eat the meat that is in their tail although I am sure the rest of it is edible, it's just too difficult to get at. The tiny bit of meat that is in the tail tastes good I guess, but it is so much work to get to it that it doesn't seem really worthwhile. One tail would maybe fill up half of a small spoon and by the time you get to that your hands are totally covered in butter and spices.
I really think that almost all of the food that they serve here has to be frozen, the crab certainly is because there is no way they would have kept those monsters alive to ship them all the way over to Vietnam.
It's a Louisiana style of cooking from what I understand and that is just fine with me. It's a different kind of spicy and at this place anyway, you have control over how spicy you want it to be.
This dinner was about 750,000 VND which is about $30, so split between 3 people, this is a pretty cheap night out. Beers were only $1 each in this place as well if that is your kind of thing.
One thing that I really enjoyed about the boil-up was the sauce that was in the bottom. They either use a bunch of butter or some sort of butter tasting alternative that is made of chemicals. Based on the price I'm gonna guess that it is probably the second thing. So I have no illusion that any of this was healthy but hey! At least it wasn't fried and this is good since almost anything in Vietnam is fried.
I don't think that I could eat here frequently because although the taste is quite strong and rich, by the time you get finished with it you are basically sick of it. In a way it is like pancakes...those first several bites are heavenly but by the end you are just eating to get it over with haha.
This restaurant is located on An Thuong 5 near the beach and if you are on the street you wont be able to miss it because of their giant light up neon sign over the entrance.
If you are lazy, here is the gmaps
I will likely go and eat here again because it is kind of fun seeing everyone get all messy with the sauce everywhere. At the start people are trying really hard to not get any of the sauce on their hands but quickly realize that this is an exercise in futility and by the end everyone has buttery junk all over the place.
I can say one thing though, I don't care for abalone but I may have just gotten a bad one.