There is no elegant way to eat crab straight from the shell.
I quickly realize this during a recent dinner at Muku, the new Tribeca 10-seat counter specializing in kaiseki—a traditional Japanese multicourse meal emphasizing seasonal ingredients, delicate flavors, and artful presentation. The restaurant—which was awarded one Michelin star just two months after opening in September, believed to be the fastest star in the city’s history—presented over two weeks in November a special menu devoted to Japan’s most beloved premium winter specialty: crab, or kani.
As we take our seats, the unsuspecting guest of honor is already center stage. Fresh off a long flight that morning from Japan, she’s brownish red, glistening, and slightly squirming 10 gangly limbs. Chef Asanuma quickly dispatches the snow crab, deftly sectioning the legs and body with a few soft, swift crunches of a long blade. A small ceramic countertop stove fills the room with the cozy scent of campfire, and we’re soon presented with two charcoal-grilled sections of crab legs alongside a crab-liver sauce the color of pistachios. I briefly attempt to extract the tender meat politely with chopsticks and a small wooden spoon but soon abandon the supplied implements altogether in favor of my fingers; glancing around, most other diners have already done the same.
When it comes to eating crab, I’m a completist, and I have relished fresh winter crab since the crack of my first claw. I have fond memories of my father bundling me up for predawn crabbing off piers in the San Francisco Bay. Dungeness crabs often occupied pride of place alongside (and sometimes instead of) a roast at my family’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and it’s the only treat I crave for my December birthday. I’ll never forget the gratification of my grandmother inspecting an intricate body segment and deeming my work “good.” My partner jokes that crab is the only food I’m willing to put in real effort for, and he’s not wrong: Aside from crustaceans, I have little patience for eating with my hands. (My regrets to chicken wings, ribs, and corn on the cob.) As a child, elders noted that my skinny digits were ideal for piano playing; I think they’re perfect for picking crab.
In winter, Japan clamors for crab. Japanese cuisine prizes savoring ingredients at their most perfect, and when temperatures drop in the Sea of Japan, snow crab move into shallow waters—with the cold water making the meat firmer, sweeter, and fuller. The female snow crab, which carries eggs in winter, is a revered luxury only caught in the final two months of the year. She’s daintier than a male snow crab but prized for her sweet, nuanced flavor and decadent, roe-filled interior, which for many marks the official start of Japan s winter.
Japan enforces tight fishing seasons to protect crab populations, with some available for mere weeks; the scarcity makes them feel special and celebratory, especially in coastal regions like Fukui and Ishikawa. The first catch makes the news, locals line up at markets, and chefs build menus that showcase every part of the crab in different textures and preparations.
This year, a similar excitement has surfaced in New York, with crabs flown in daily from Japan. Among Muku’s eight courses were a comforting chawanmushi (steamed egg custard) with snow crab and foie gras; tiny toasts with hairy crab and ankimo (steamed monkfish liver, often called the foie gras of the sea); Alaskan king crab wrapped in fragrant shiso leaves and lightly tempura’d, with a dust of numbing sansho pepper and sour umeboshi sauce; and chef Manabu Asanuma’s signature soba noodles, made with buckwheat from his family’s farm in Japan, served with a thick egg-drop crab dipping sauce.
At Tribeca’s Sushidokoro Mekumi, the newly opened first American outpost of Kanazawa’s acclaimed omakase counter, an $888 menu spotlights Japan’s premium winter crabs, including beni zuwai (red snow crab) and kegani (hairy crab), all sourced from Ishikawa. (While I was raised with the guideline that crab season runs all months that end in R, reservations are still open to try this menu in January.) And this month at the Midtown tempura temple Tempura Matsui, female snow crab is bundled with its roe and then gently fried. In Ishikawa, female snow crabs are referred to as kobako, meaning “little jewel box”—likely because of the crab’s compact body and neatly packed eggs.
At SoHo’s kaiseki-kappo counter Hirohisa (with kaiseki dishes in a more approachable setting), the $195 winter dinner tasting menu features female snow crab with warm house-made udon, a gravy rich with crab meat, and earthy winter vegetables, in addition to a crab clay-pot rice. At sister restaurant Sushi Ikumi around the corner, you can preorder a female snow crab ($55)—boiled, carefully picked, arranged with its roe, and served in its shell—to accompany your omakase until the end of the year.
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Many other Asian cuisines also feature the scrumptious crustacean at this time of year. In Greenpoint, Restaurant Yuu’s new menu of Japanese-French cuisine includes a king crab course with cauliflower, yuzu, white miso, and green apple, finished with crab consommé jelly and caviar. At Noksu, the Michelin-starred counter hidden in the Herald Square subway station, a complex egg custard layers foie gras, Burgundy snails, and caviar over crab cooked in scallion oil, veal jus, tomato water, and lime. It’s a luxurious reinterpretation of a Thai crab omelette that spotlights peak-season Dungeness crabs on the $250 tasting menu.
Semma’s upscale homestyle Southern Indian menu includes Dungeness crab with the layered flatbread parotta and coconut rice ($145 for two, pre-order only). And YongChuan has brought China’s famed Ningbo drunken crab to Chinatown ($58 small, $118 large), marinated in a blend of aged Shaoxing wine, Baijiu, soy, and vinegar and served raw and chilled, fragrant and bursting with orange roe.
And should I ever bid farewell to New York City, I already know my final meal: crab with glutinous rice at Golden Wonton King in Flushing. A whole crab (king crab or Dungeness—there’s no wrong answer) is plucked from the restaurant’s water tanks and wok-fried up with umami-loaded sticky rice (another lifelong favorite of mine), with enough leg, claw, and body meat to satisfy the most fastidious crab lover. Let’s hope it never happens—but what a tasty way to go out.
