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hat is the best thing about eating crab for all crab mania out there? The answer would be getting your hands dirty into the saucy crabs, cracking the crab legs to get down to the meaty goodness of every part of the leg and savoring it until its last piece of meat.

While some might think that it is time-consuming to eat a whole-crab dish, aficionados of one of the most delectable crustaceans find some comforts of the seafood to get themselves messy into a handful of crab delicacies.

Crab with black pepper sauce. Courtesy of Kepiting Asap CendrawasihAnd Kepiting Asap Cendrawasih Restaurant aims to please the palate of crab lovers in town. The name of the restaurant is basically derived from its signature menu, kepiting asap (smoked crab), one of seafood dishes offered by the restaurant that is nestled around 1 kilometer from Lebak Bulus bus terminal.

Crab and asparagus soup. Courtesy of Kepiting Asap CendrawasihThe restaurant’s house chef, Ahmad Sambas, let me and some journalists to take a sneak peak of his kitchen, giving some quick tips and tricks on how to treat and cook the crab the right way.

For the entire crab menu, Ahmad said that they use crabs from Borneo and Papua since they are better quality as compared with those from Java.

Chef Ahmad serves crab with black pepper sauce on a plate. JP/Triwik Kurniasari“The most important thing about cooking seafood, especially crab, is making sure that the crab is still alive because the meat would taste much sweeter,” explained Ahmad, picking a live crab from a basin and placing it on a cutting board.

First things, he said, are to clean, scrub down the crab with brush and cut it. “We later steam the crab for around 2 to 3 minutes,” said Ahmad, skillfully cut the crab into parts and put them into a steamer.

“It would be better to steam the crab because boiling it would drain the essence of the crabmeat, while frying it would make it dry. Then we are ready to cook the crab.”

That afternoon, Ahmad demonstrated making a black pepper crab by deep-frying the crab for 1 minute before sautéing it with black pepper sauce and ginger.

He also gave hints on creating the restaurant’s special dish on the list: the smoked crab.

Smoked crab combines 21 spices and fragrant, including garlic, shallot and ginger, to create this dish. “It takes four hours to make this secret sauce,” Ahmad said.

After being steamed and fried, the crab and the spices are put into coconut leaves and grilled for 1 to 2 minutes before it is served, he added.

“No need to grill the crab for long. The spices have seeped into the meat in just 1 or 2 minutes,” suggested Ahmad. Wrapped in coconut leaves, the smoked crab is really something to tantalize your taste buds.

There are others recipes waiting in the wings whether you opt for a crab starter or main course.

Among other saucy crabs are crab with telur asin (salted egss), saus tiram (oyster sauce) and saus padang (West Sumatra’s Padang spicy sauce). The prices depend much on the weight of the crab, ranging from 5 ounces to 1 kilogram.

Craving for a heavy rice meal? You can choose a portion of nasi goreng kepiting (crab fried rice) for yourself or even to share.

Soup individuals who enjoy slurping various soups can order its crabmeat with asparagus or seafood, which mixes a myriad of ingredients such as fresh crabmeat, prawns, squid and mushrooms.

Besides an array of crab dishes, the restaurant also has other seafood cooking on its menu card, like prawn, fish and clams cooked in various styles, as well as seafood fried rice and noodles.

If you are a serious crab lover living nearby Lebak Bulus region, this is an OK restaurant to visit.

But since there are plenty of places in the city to get a good crab dish, non South Jakartans might think twice as they will need some efforts to get to the place since they have to beat the traffic, struggling to be patient to find ways in between public minivans (angkot) that often stop carelessly in the middle of the streets to wait for passengers.