After a really excellent first experience at Feastro, I invited a foodie friend who worked downtown to come with me. We were there shortly before 2pm and there wasn't any lineup at all. The fresh sheet had changed and the excellent Manila Clams I had last time were not on the Feastro menu that day. My friend loves crab, so I went with the Crab and Shrimp Cake. She opted for the Bonzai Prawns.
As mentioned in my previous review, the Crab and Shrimp Cake is a good-sized block and sits on a colourful salad that includes a few blackberries, olives, and slices of beet. The salad wasn't heavily dressed and I give it high marks except that the vegetables could have been cut to more manageable slices than whole leaves. Especially on a tiny take-out plate, it was quite inconvenient and had the potential of splashing some dressing on somebody, or on oneself.
The crab cake itself looked very promising. The taste of crab wasn't very strong, so the ratio of crab meat to filler is unclear. However, they weren't skimpy on the shrimp and you can see small whole shrimps inside the cake, dotting it liberally like blueberries in a large blueberry muffin.
What ruined the whole thing was the combination of hot crab cake on cold salad. The crab cake was, as a result, lukewarm when it could have been hot and tasty, fresh from frying. If you try it, I recommend asking for the salad on the side in a separate plate, or substituted with some sweet potato fries.
The Bonzai Prawns were quite simple: Simply boiled prawns in a very delicious sauce. Pre-peeled except for the tail bit. It came with quite a bit of rice with tiny sides to jazz it up, as well as a skewer of what was probably fresh-cut pineapple since the skin was still on. While the grilled pineapple was a nice, tangy, juicy accompaniment, I have to disagee with leaving the skin on after seeing it squirt and dribble all over the place when my friend bit into it. One-bite pieces with no skin would have been much better.
The Crab and Shrimp Cake and the Bonzai Prawns could both use a bit more thought into the composition, but overall it's still tasty food at a good price. Just wear black in case you splash or drip something on yourself.
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