The Fatty Crab – Upper West Side

The Fatty Crab is by no means a new restaurant in NYC.  In fact, it is a growing restaurant group that now has two Fatty Crab locations (plus one coming in St. Johns) and another in Brooklyn called the Fatty Cue.  The food here is Malaysian, but definitely not typical fare that you might find at other Malaysian restaurants.  First, it’s far more expensive. And second, it does seem to have a bit of an upscale feel to the food.  That doesn’t mean the food isn’t absolutely bangin’, because it is.

I decided to finally check it out during restaurant week, Han Style…Solo (ok, I stole that joke from How I Met Your Mother, and it probably still isn’t funny).  The Vegetarian didn’t come along because they offer little to no vegetarian options.  The restaurant week dishes were some of the ones that I would have ordered anyway, so I don’t feel like I was forced to pick things I wouldn’t want to order.

Above, you can see the first course.  A watermelon and crispy pork belly salad, though it’s not really a salad.  Those regular readers know I can not resist pork belly.  If it’s on the menu, I want it.  The pork belly was melt in your mouth amazing.  The watermelon could have been missing from the plate and I wouldn’t have cared.  The thing that should have been missing was the picked watermelon rind.

The next dish was the fatty duck, with mustard greens, Thai chili, gula jawa.  The duck was incredible.  The skin was cooked to perfection. Crispy, juicy and not overcooked at all.  The accompaniments were a bit like a sauce on top and was sopped up nicely by a side of rice (which they have the audacity to charge $3 for).  The breast pieces were untouched and brought home for leftovers.  Ill just have to broil them briefly to crisp up that skin.

The finale was a crispy banana with peanuts, jack fruit and gula jawa.  I don’t really know what that list thing is, but damn was it good.  The sauce almost had a chocolate taste, but clearly wasn’t chocolate.  It was sweet, but the banana and peanuts gave it more of a savory taste.

Overall, the Fatty Crab delivers on some amazing upscale Malaysian food.  The prices are high, and without restaurant week, this meal would have been $45, but the lunch restaurant week special puts it at $24.  Quite a steal and a huge amount of food enough for a second meal.  I would suggest this place for groups to share a lot of dishes, as they are sort of family style, or at the very least, can be eaten that way.