- Hey, everyone, I hope you're having an amazing day.
It's Mark Wiens, I'm in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Today, I'm with the Best of Sri Lanka Food Tour
with David, The Hungry Tourist, and it's gonna be kind
of a mixed day.
We are starting off for lunch,
an authentic Sri Lankan lunch, then we're gonna have tea,
and then tonight for dinner, we are gonna go
to one of the most iconic crab restaurants in Colombo,
in Sri Lanka to eat Sri Lankan crabs.
But we just arrived for lunch.
Let's go eat.
(lively music)
- This place is amazing.
There's like 50 or 60 different curries,
and all on banana leaf.
You eat with your hands.
It's just super amazing.
You have a grill.
You have, like, cold stuff, hot stuff.
- Hi, Mark! - Hello!
- Hello, hello!
We got into the restaurant.
They even have a grill going in here.
You can smell the smokiness.
They have, like, kind of a palm branch roof.
All buffet style, except, I mean, it's not all-you-can-eat,
but you get a plate, you choose which dishes you want.
Maybe, there's like 50 dishes.
You can just see the clay pots going down the table.
So, there's quite a long line,
so we're just waiting in line.
We're gonna get rice,
we're gonna choose our different dishes, and eat.
This is where it gets really tough
because you actually have to make some decisions,
or can we get a little bit of everything.
I don't even think that's possible to fit on a plate.
(lively music)
This one.
(indistinct chattering)
Yeah, this one.
I think that's good.
Yes, thank you.
Okay, so I go this side?
Oh, the fried section.
My plate is almost full
but then you move over to this section.
I think this is the fried.
Oh, this is the fried section, right?
- Deviled sausage, deviled pork, deviled fish,
cuttlefish, prawns, and fried also, snake fish.
- [Mark] Let's have this one please.
- Your barbecue.
- [Mark] Thank you very much.
That's huge.
Yeah, this food really adds up.
This like basket is...
Oh, that entire basket is just filled with food.
They put a lotus leaf plate down
before they put all your food down.
There's rice on the bottom, looks and smells incredible.
Just going to go in for whatever's right on the top here,
some of this green vegetable and some of the rice.
- [Mark] It's like an herb salad with coconut in it.
Okay, okay, I think this one is some of the brinjal,
which is eggplant.
Again I'm going to mix that in.
The brinjal, the eggplant is amazing.
It's sweet and sour and like caramelized tasting.
But and again it sort of like melts in your mouth
at the same time.
Chicken curry, I believe.
Mm, a little bit of a sour oniony taste.
I'm going to chase that with a chili.
Oh, nice.
You can eat the entire stem and all
because they're deep fried chilies.
This one is the shrimp curry.
And typically when they make the shrimp curry,
you can actually almost eat the shell
because it's been stewed for so long.
I really like mixing the rice with that herb salad.
Into this bite.
(upbeat lively music)
Oh wow, nice little light lunch there.
I feel like there's like two kilos of Sri Lankan food
in my stomach right now which is probably true.
It's fun to choose, it's fun to eat.
It's just a great like relaxed place to try Sri Lankan food.
Oh, and nothing better to drink after a meal like that,
than a Sri Lankan king coconut.
Mm, mm, mm.
After a meal like that, with the amount of sweat
that you've exerted, and the energy you put out to eat,
you need to replace your electrolytes.
Yeah, that tastes really good.
It is a lot harder to walk out of the restaurant
than it was to walk in the restaurant.
(upbeat music)
- [Mark] Micah, jump.
Gonna be honest with you, I'm not totally sure where we are
but I think we're here to drink some tea
and maybe buy some tea.
Everybody stepped in here.
- Good afternoon.
- [Mark] Hello, good afternoon, good afternoon,
nice to meet you, thank you, thank you.
This is actually a Dilmah tea shop,
and Dilmah is one of the big brands of ceylon tea.
They have the shop here where you can order tea,
but then I think you can also buy the tea
on the other side possibly.
Thank you very much.
- Rose with french vanilla, it's a flavored black tea
with pineapple.
- Ah, cool.
Whoa, that is like a pineapple shake.
So we gotta wait for the yellow sand to filter down,
and then the tea will be finished steeping.
- I'm going to need a magnifying glass.
- I'm flipping mine, I think it's good.
- [Mark] I'm gonna wait another 30.
- Yeah, you wait another 30.
And now I guess I crack this? Is that right?
- You gotta flip the tea over,
take off the lid or the little top.
And I love these cups, the double walled glass.
It is a white tea, it smells very fruity,
almost like peachy.
And it is very light.
Very light, very like a chill chilled tea.
(glasses clink)
A really relaxing tea indeed.
And I'm enjoying this, we're all enjoying this lounge.
This tea lounge.
Okay, next drink, I got a matcha.
Oh, and it's a cold one.
I thought it was going to be hot.
- [Man] It looks like a shot of wheatgrass.
Oh wow, that's not just matcha.
That's like lime too, oh wow, that's awesome.
Tastes like a straight lime juice matcha infusion.
Ying, that's awesome.
It's not matcha like you think.
It's like lime juice.
(everyone laughs)
(upbeat music)
For dinner tonight we are going to,
it's one of the most iconic crab restaurants in Colombo.
Ministry of crab.
(upbeat music)
You may have half kilo, small, medium, large, XL, kilo crab,
jumbo colossal, the OMG and the crabzilla.
Thank you.
Gonna put on the head nets, hair nets
to go inside the kitchen and see some of the crabs cooking.
Nice one.
- Yeah, oh yeah.
- Oh Sinan really needs one.
- Oh.
(Mark laughs)
- I really need one, so much hair.
(everyone laughs)
- Not only do they have crab here
but massive river prawns as well.
- One more.
- [Mark] That thing is massive.
(wok sizzling)
Which dish are you making now?
- The garlic crab.
(flames roaring)
- Then he's just like carefully controlling the heat,
so that it bubbles, so that it steams,
so that it cooks evenly and perfectly throughout the crab.
They have an unique style of plating the crab,
with the shell on the bottom,
and the two claws in the front.
And then the legs and the other like limbs
like sprouting out of the main shell.
And then pour on that juice, with the garlic
and the sauce all over it and that smells incredible.
And it goes straight to your table piping hot,
boiling, still boiling away on your plate.
Okay, a couple of things.
Number one is that the Ministry of crab, the restaurant,
it's within the old Dutch hospital.
So it has a colonial feel to it.
The walls of the building are really thick,
and then you have the windows, you have the breeze,
the air coming through.
And Ministry of crab is a restaurant
on Asia's 50 best restaurants list.
So it's one of the top restaurants in Asia,
known for their crab but they also have river prawns.
Unfortunately it's not season for the crabzilla,
massive crabs.
But we got the next step, next step below,
the OMG crabs.
We got 15 of them.
(woks sizzling)
Before we start on the crabs,
we are going to have the clams and the river prawns
and it's amazing to see all of the woks going at once,
frying on the woks, the steam rising.
The aromatherapy is just insane.
The garlic, the amount of garlic, the amount of butter.
The fumes, the steam.
- I love clams.
- [Waiter] There's two more oyster shots.
- We're starting off with oyster shots.
Okay, I actually totally forgot I had the hair net on.
Okay, oyster shots.
Whoa, that just slid out of the toothpick.
Mm.
Dripping the juices.
Oh yeah, that's just like a butter, butter creamy sensation.
That does taste good, really good.
- Thank you, thank you very much.
What is your name?
- Osana.
- Osana, okay.
He's offering to put my bib on.
It's an offer I can't resist.
Keep calm and crab on.
Thank you very much, thank you very much.
Okay cool, so the next course has arrived.
These are the river shrimp, which they fried
in like an immense amount of butter and garlic.
The key to eating river shrimp is to lift up the helmet.
Oh, it's so hot.
Yeah, whoa.
Oh, look at that, oh, look at that tomalley in there.
It's like a little puddle.
It's like a melted puddle of butter.
You gotta look into the interiors of that head.
It's like sloshing around,
it's like sloshing around in there.
I'm going to start with the body, looks it's just dripping
with oily juices, in fact I'm going to redip it actually.
Redip in the butter juices.
Okay.
Mm, oh wow, yeah, that is stunning.
Garlicky, buttery.
How was that, Dudi?
- Crazy, you gotta give it to this place.
We had some amazing crabs this week.
But they have their act together.
- It's like a, it's such a well functioning system.
- Yeah.
- The way they have it down.
- And the product is amazing.
- What is your name?
- I'm Brava.
- [Mark] Thank you for holding the light.
- Yeah.
- [Mark] Thank you very much.
I'm going to rehydrate.
Oh, yes.
It's so fat, it's so meaty, it's so plump.
- All right, freedom of speech.
Freedom.
Oo, oo.
(upbeat lively music)
(wok sizzling)
- Round of applause.
Give them a round of applause.
Amazing chefs.
And just all of them working together.
All of the woks are going at full blast.
- Teamwork. Teamwork. - Beautiful.
- This is how you win the superbowl guys.
- It's a beautiful thing, it is a beautiful thing.
(plates clatter)
- [David] Oh, get the juice.
Get the juice.
- And it is impressive to see them as they plate that,
they actually put down a little scoop of rice.
That's only to hold the crab shell in place,
so they can create the formation.
But it's impressive, it's almost like a sport.
The way they compete.
As soon as that crab comes off of the fire,
it comes onto the counter top, literally,
within milliseconds, they jump into that pan of crab.
They start formulating, they put the shell down first,
the head top shell.
Finally, they dump on the sauce,
the remaining juices at the bottom of the wok.
But that initial pounce, that initial reaction,
the reflexes are incredible
as soon as it comes off the fire.
(upbeat lively music)
Oh, I think I'm done with the hair net.
- Rocking the baby. - Rocking the baby.
There's like five different versions of crab you can get,
I went with the black pepper.
And again this formation, the claws in the front.
What shall we begin with?
I think I'll start with the claws,
because there's two of them.
Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get some
of that pepper sauce all over the shell.
Let it seep into the shell.
Slide this out.
Oh yes, it comes out.
Sure, thank you very much.
Okay, and I think actually the thing to do is rebuild.
Rebuild the claw.
Rebuild the claw with pepper sauce.
Oh yeah, okay.
Oh wow, oh the crab meat.
It's like ridiculously sweet.
It's so stringy, and then it's wrapped up in that sauce.
The sauce is garlicky, a little bit peppery.
And you taste like the, just the sweetness of that crab.
The sweetness of that crab is insane.
Okay then, and just go in for an entire spoon
of shredded crab in pepper sauce.
Okay, a little piece of shell.
Wow, that is awesome.
It's amazing, an amazing product, an amazing crab.
That sauce.
And actually the black pepper isn't like,
at first it seems kind of mild
but then it does start
to like almost tingle your lips a little bit.
How's the crab guys?
- I have something for you.
Share it with my friends.
- Oh wow, oh yeah. - Chili garlic.
- Dudi got the, is it the chili garlic?
- Chili garlic yeah.
- It's a totally different flavor, thank you.
You gotta grab one of mine too.
Mm, oh yeah, the chili garlic is nice as well.
It has a kind of like Asian Chinese kind
of like wok fried taste to it, yep.
The kind of sweetness, a little bit chili.
It's good, you really taste the smokiness of the wok
in that.
- Oh yeah baby.
- Having fun.
- Messy, dirty, loving life baby.
(Mark laughs)
- It's really good.
- [David] But you can take the bread, like a sponge.
- [Mark] Sponge it.
- [David] And sponge it.
Get all the goodies from inside.
- [Mark] Sponge juice it.
- Yeah.
- Yep, we were just talking how pure this crab tastes.
It really is pure,
you really taste the quality of their crab.
The sweetness is undeniable.
And you're gonna wanna lick every last crevice on this crab.
And bite out every single piece of meat.
Look at that one biter.
I think I'm going to add some more sauce to it.
What I like about the sauce is that it's not overpowering,
you still really taste the natural taste of the crab.
Yet you do taste the sauce like
with your first bite, but then the crab just shines through.
Oh wow, that crab is stunning.
- [David] Boom.
- Wow, wow, wow.
- [Mark] Look at those fingers.
- Yeah baby.
I mean I could just go like this.
- Cheers.
- Cheers guys.
- Yes.
- Oh yeah, oh, that's stunning.
There's so much flavor in that bite.
Down to my final piece, the final drumstick,
the final claw.
The joint there.
Oh oh oh, that just slides off.
Oh, that is beautiful,
there's only one thing that can make it better.
It's called the rejuice.
(upbeat lively music)
Oh wow, oh.
That crab was incredible, the actual product,
the crab itself, it was so meaty, it was so sweet.
The pepper sauce was incredible.
It's a finer dining setting and the crab is not cheap.
But it really is the quality, really does stand out.
It's been an amazing time
to hang out with just amazing people who love to eat
and who are passionate about food, passionate about people.
I love connecting and enjoying meals with people.
And that's really what food is about,
what meals are about.
And the hands that prepare them.
And by far the most crabs
in a single week that I have eaten in my entire life.
I'll have all the links in the description box below,
so check them out down here.
Again, I just wanna say a huge thank you
to David the hungry tourist for putting everything together.
He's an amazing guy, and he has a passion for people,
especially the people behind the food and connecting.
And I want to say a big thank you to you
for watching this video and this entire series.
Again, I'll have all the links in the description box,
you can watch the entire playlist of all the videos.
And yeah, huge thank you for watching.
Please remember to give this video a thumbs up
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Good night from Colombo, see you on the next video.