Excursion to Takao: crabby afternoon

The Parental Units and I are taking a trip down south, so we hopped on the Taiwan High Speed Rail this morning and took the (relatively) slow train to Kaohsiung. After getting off at Zuoying Station (左營站), I decided that I should lead the two elderly folks on a 1 km walk to lunch...

I had never heard of Hei Bonn Gōrudohausu (平凡五金行) until a couple of days ago. A journalist had just posted about his visit to this gourmet food store and mentioned that they had Shanghaiese hairy crabs (大閘蟹) for sale, and also the fact that there's a kitchen upstairs which would cook them for customers free of charge. I know that mom's always up for having these crabs, and she readily agreed to come check the place out.

I had called yesterday to check whether they still had the crabs, and the store clerk suggested that I reserve some because they only had a limited number of them. I chose not to do this, and figured we'll just see what is available on the spot. Well, someone had got to the crab station literally seconds before us and bought a few. By the time the previous customer was done, they only had one crab weighing around 5 taels and 6 crabs weighing 7 taels. We originally just wanted to buy 4 crabs, but the clerk suggested that we take advantage of their "buy 5 get 1 free" deal, so we took all 6 of the bigger crabs.

We went upstairs and got the staff to steam the crabs for us. They were very friendly and helpful, and agreed to steam them in 2 batches based on our instructions.

The three of us each took a crab to start.

Lovers of these crabs adore them for their roe, and at this point in the season, the male crabs had plenty of it.

Actually, these male crabs also had plenty of translucent sperm, too, in addition to the "roe".

While walking around downstairs, I came across this daily quiche, and this came with a couple of prawns on top along with some mayo. Pretty satisfying, but I wish I had gotten around to eat it before my crab came.

Mom took a second crab and it was better than her first, so she was happy. And that, of course, was all that mattered.