In my search for the best marinated soy crab in Singapore, I decided to visit Guiga since they are one of the few restaurants that serves this dish in Singapore. I have previously visited Guiga for their barbeque and I quite liked their black pork meat so I had high expectations to find my soy crab here.
Guiga has the typical Korean barbeque set up with mostly booth seats and the exhaust pipes hanging above the grill. They have 2 side in the outlet with about enough seats for 10 to 15 groups of customers in these safe distancing times.
There are loads to order from their menu from different cuts of meats to typical Korean stews, soups and dishes. The price range is generally acceptable and they do have very economical lunch sets which is why the lunch crowd is quite busy.
As with all Korean restaurants, we were served 6 side dishes and the usual sauces for dipping of the meats. The side dishes are pretty tasty although nothing too out of the ordinary.
First things first, the main reason why I am here is the search for the marinated raw soy crabs. To our delight, they served this as a lunch set with a stew for only SGD 18. We decided to order 1 lunch set to try before ordering more if the crabs were good. The lunch set came with a decent sized serving of crabs. Between 2 persons, we had 2 legs each. The crabs were pretty good and the flavouring was deep enough. The only downside was that the sweetness of the crab itself did not come through and there was hardly any roe. We felt this was due to the quality of the crabs and while they were fresh, they were probably just different from the ones in Korea.
The stew that came with the lunch set was served in a generous clay pot and for the price of the set, this is quite worth the money. We could choose between kimchi stew or bean stew and we took the bean stew. The flavours were great with a strong fermented bean taste and the ingredients were generous and fresh. Rice was also provided together with the stew.
Since we were at a barbeque restaurant, we had to order at least 1 serving of pork to satisfy our cravings. I recently fell in love with the pork shoulder part which was extremely tender and juicy even after being grilled. The pork shoulder meat here was a pretty general grade and was not as soft and succulent as the ones I had at Borgna. My take was to stick to pork belly here.
As the crabs tasted wonderful; the closest we could get from the ones in Korea; we decided to order the a la carte serving which was much bigger than the one from the set. There were about 6 to 8 parts but there was much lesser roe on this serving compared to the one from the lunch set. Since this was the closet we could get to satisfying our craving, we relish in devouring the crabs although the experience was incomplete without the mixed rice with roe in the crab shell as it was not provided here.
Overall, Guiga has very decent and pocket friendly sets during lunch time and if you are looking for a place to try the marinated raw soy crab in Singapore, this is the place to visit. For those who has never tried it before, this would be a good first time experience and for those who tried it in Korea, this is possibly the closest we can get until the next Korea trip. For the rest of the food, the taste is generally pretty tasty and service is also quite attentive.
Address: 134 Tg Pagar Rd, Singapore 088538
Operating hours: 11 am to 3 pm and 5 pm to 11 pm ( till 1 am on Fridays) Full day operation for Sat and Sun from 11 am to 1 am / 2 am respectively.
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