Chili Crab

In 1950, our team at Palm Beach Seafood Restaurant at Upper East Coast Road, created Singapore’s original Chilli Crab dish.

Inspired by suggestions from the restaurant’s spice-loving Peranakan guests, Chef Cher steamed up a crab, and tossed it in a savoury chilli and tomato sauce, and the rest is history. Our Chilli Crab has since become a hot favourite with locals and foreigners alike, and Palm Beach has remained true to this timeless recipe.

Black Pepper Crab

When the Black Pepper Crab started popping up on menus of local seafood restaurants, Palm Beach decided that it was time to go one better and to create a black pepper crab dish that would be unique from all others.

It started with a trip to Vietnam during which we discovered a flavourful and dry-crusted crab dish, the Tamarind Crab. Inspired by the aromas and flavours of this dish, we embarked on a research expedition to uncover the secret to achieving such intense taste and texture.

Back in Singapore, tamarind was replaced with black pepper and after countless recipe experimentations and just as many tasting sessions, we finally hit on the perfect proportion of pepper, sugar and soy which is now our formula for our Black Pepper Crab. It proved to be a hit with our guests and is second in popularity only to our Chilli Crab.

Golden Milk Prawns and Creamy Crab

On a trip to Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s, we chanced upon a local street dish of crumbed prawns smothered in a sweet-salty and creamy sauce that was absolutely delicious. We then decided that we had to recreate it for ourselves, so that we could share it with our guests.

We soon realised that the main ingredients in the dish were milk and butter, which was unheard of in Chinese cooking in those days. With the addition of basil and several other ingredients, we created a sauce similar to what we had tasted, which was then reduced to golden crumbs that coated each prawn.

These Milk Prawns made their debut at our Kallang Leisure Park locale with much success. To push the envelope even further, we decided we had to try injecting these flavours into a crab dish. What resulted was our Creamy Crab dish, which has the same milk-butter sauce base spiced up with curry leaves and chilli padi, topped with golden crumbs. This proved to be yet another hit and it won the “Best Dish Award” in the Singapore Gourmet Hunt 2004.

Honey Tangy Fish

Our Honey Tangy Fish was created to showcase a spectacular chilli sauce that had been created in a competition amongst our chefs to see who could come up with a better sauce to rival that of our original Palm Beach Chilli Sauce. At the same time, we also wanted to create a signature fish dish that could set itself apart from the traditional Cantonese or Teochew flavours.

The dish starts with a perfectly-fried whole fish served on a banana leaf. Atop it sits a piquant nest of shredded cuttlefish - an unlikely yet well-paired sidekick to the fish - which is then drizzled with the “No. 2 secret sauce”, lemongrass, chillies and shallots.

The fragrant sauce and cuttlefish forms the perfect counterbalance to the crispiness of the fish, leading this dish to be named Best Dish in 2001 by the Singapore Gourmet Hunt and in 2010 by the Restaurant Association of Singapore’s Tasty Singapore Chef Competition.

Double Baked Crab A La Singapura

The origin of this cheesy crab dish was derived from San Francisco’s Grilled Dungeness Crab, which uses key flavourings like sake and a combination of cheeses. It made us wonder, could Singaporeans come to appreciate a cheesy crab dish? We took on the challenge to find out.

It was tough going at first, trying to formulate the perfect combination of cheeses to suit our local palate. Even after heavy grilling, baking or frying, the cheesy flavours just didn’t seem to take well to the crab. After much trial and error and many arduous attempts, we finally mastered the technique of preparing this dish, which comprised baking the crab twice in a mixture of two cheese, spices and Chinese wine, which infused the crab with the desired aromas.

Our hard work truly paid off when the judges at the Singapore Food Festival secured this dish a spot in the Top Ten Food Creations of 2004.

Coco-lobo / Live Lobster with Vermicelli in Superior Stock

During one of our chef exchange programmes in the mid 1990s, we were introduced to yet another variation of the classic Tom Yum Seafood Soup. As we’d been looking to expand our soup offerings, this soup then became our inspiration for our new soup creation, the Coco-Lobo.

The first thing we did was to replace the prawns and calamari commonly found in tom yum soup with live whole lobster for a decadent twist. Simmering the lobster shell in the stock infused the broth with the rich and distinct flavours of the lobster, which we then further intensified with the use of lime, chilli oil, milk and other spices.

Our guests could not seem to get enough of this reinvented classic, and so we added vermicelli to the dish for yet another level of texture. The Coco-Lobo has since gone on to win two accolades: the Singapore Gourmet Hunt 2000 Best Dish and the Singapore Food Festival 2008 Winning Dish.