A note on the words: a crab cake is a patty of crab meat, bound and fried, and a kani cream korokke is the Japanese relative of it, crab folded into a thick bechamel, breaded and deep-fried. Buffalo chicken is fried chicken tossed in a vinegary hot-pepper and butter sauce, and Cajun seasoning is the peppery Louisiana blend of paprika, garlic and dried herbs. Hors d’oeuvre, borrowed into Japanese as odoburu, means the assorted small plates that open a meal.
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Dancing Crab Tokyo on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. This time, to Dancing Crab Tokyo, right by Shinjuku station. It had a moment a while back, did it not. I never went then, but it came back to me while I was hunting for somewhere in Shinjuku, so I booked and went. My memory was that it is a place where you eat crab and shrimp with your hands, so I reserved the table only and left the ordering until I got there.
You go in and they show you to your seat, and the staff uniforms somehow felt like they were pointing at a concept. Why that was becomes clear later on.
Mega Combo — 13,000 yen
Having no idea what was good, I decided to try the hors d’oeuvre and the Mega Combo.
Once the order was in they laid a sheet over the table and explained that the whole table is the plate.
Quite a new experience.
The first drink was one the menu said was perfect for the toast.
Fairly sweet.
A gloriously junky hot snack set.
Which is exactly what you want, really. There is the thing they call a crab cake, which is, what, something like a kani cream korokke, plus classic buffalo chicken, Cajun fries and spicy garlic shrimp, four portions each. I would have been happy with a bit more of a mountain of fries.
And here is the Mega Combo. Someone in the group is not good with spice, so we had it with the garlic sauce, which is not hot.
The staff ask you for a shout, something along those lines, and then
Whoomph.
The table is the plate, so nothing is actually wrong here, and yet there is a guilty thrill to it, as though you are doing something you should not be.
There is a decent amount of it, but, hmm. In the end a lot of it is shell, so with four people it turns out to be less than you think. I had expected more than we could possibly eat, and it landed just right. The crab and the shrimp have no cuts made in them, so you crack the shells yourself with the scissors. Putting on gloves and eating straight off the table is refreshing! Shellfish is justice, as ever. Very good.
Picking away at it bit by bit, we got to about the right point, and stopped there!
After we had been eating a while, the room went a little dark. Huh? Is it someone’s birthday? Then the music started, and
？？？
while I sat there dumbfounded, the young women on the staff suddenly broke into a dance.
Right. So that was the kind of place this is. I had vaguely felt something of Hooters about the uniforms, and this was why.
I had been completely sure the name meant the crabs dance (on the table)
but it is the staff who dance.
It is a shop with a bit of an attraction to it, and enjoying it that way is a perfectly good option.
Dancing Crab Tokyo (Seafood / Shinjuku Station、Shinjuku-sanchome Station、Shinjuku-nishiguchi Station）
Tabelog dinner rating★★★☆☆ 3.4
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
