O Crab Seafood Restaurant Chatswood

Rebecca Varidel
9th May 2016

Even if you are not a Chatswood or north shore local the tasty upstairs fishing port of O Crab at 9 Railway Street is a worthy seafood adventure.

The seafood diner welcomes you with a fabulous selection of vintage rock and roll tunes, hanging nets and a large selection of tinnies- many of the beers are imports from California, keeping to the American theme. The tinnies have a good Aussie craft beer contingency represented too. If like me, you have a reservation, it is pretty easy to spot your table. The booking keeps the craft theme going with your name scribed on the brown paper tablecloth. Cool.

O Crab is best known as the name suggests, for its crabs- well, ahem oh yes, that might be totally obvious. For example, the restaurant is well known and loved for its crabs in a bag- choose Blue swimmer, Alaskan snow crab, or Alaskan king crab. And there's an O Crab patty burger. Or there's salad, such as Soft shell crab papaya salad ($18).

Yes. Life can be simple. As easy as A B C:
A= Arrive
B= Beer
C= Crabs

But there's more to the seafood at O Crab than that and we delved further into the menu.

Here's what we tried.

We started with the velvety Seafood chowder ($14), served in its own hollowed out bread bowl. The chowder is beautifully seasoned and chock full of mussels and prawns and fish and vegetables. The bread top is great for dipping. Another tip, scrape the soppy chowder soaked bread from the inside and savour every mouthful. One more tip, leave some bread for dipping later in your crab pot.

Next up we kept on going with the American classics. This time we dipped and licked and sucked on moist and tender Buffalo wings ($14). Sides of crunchy classic celery and carrot sticks and the obligatory blue cheese sauce. With them we ordered delicious truffle and parmesan fries ($10). Also good for dipping.

Our Classic crab pot ($65) was resplendent with blue swimmer crab, Alasakan king crab cluster, big fat juicy prawns,  corn and potatoes. The feast came with claw cracking tools, and bibs. Gloriously messy business but finger licking good. We'll be back.

www.ocrab.com.au