Address: 200 Turf Club Road, #03-03 Main Grandstand, Turf City, Singapore 287994
Tel: +65 6875 1895

For those not in touch with football related news, Owen is the name of a football player in England. Michael Owen started off his career at Liverpool. He was fast, scored many goals, had a clean cut image and also played for the England team. In fact, he was viewed as the messiah for the country. Until he got crocked (brit slang for injured), lost his touch, got flogged to Real Madrid for plenty of money, did not make much of an impact there, sent back to England, and he is currently with Newcastle now where he is still out injured.

The owner of this restaurant is probably a Owen fan (this would be quite an understatement). I would think he was a liverpool fan too. This is due to the resemblance his restaurant logo has with that of the Liverpool Football Club crest. Just replace the bird on the Liverpool crest …with erm…a happy crab with a cap…

Even though Owen is now at Newcastle, I do not think the owner would be changing his restaurant’s logo to a sort of prison stripe emblem soon.

Anyway, this entry is a belated one. My friend sky, a rabid Liverpool fan, had decided to give a treat to his friends on account of his birthday. All of the dudes present there were Liverpool fans, bearing one. Me, I am an Arsenal fan. I am not going to make any jibes at Liverpool at this point. Peace.

Owen Seafood restaurant has a unique ordering system. Patrons are invited to review and choose their live seafood from a rather impressive series of tanks and enclosures housing the soon to be cooked creatures.

It was quite a spectacle. There was an exciting atmosphere in the air. I think at some level there was some reverting to form of our instinct to hunt and eat very fresh food. Notwithstanding there the fresh food here was confined in very convenient tanks and that the only hunting involved was the jabbing of fingers at the seafood of our choice.

Thereafter, a service staff would haul out the selected items, weight them and proceed to take instructions on how the food should be prepared - fried with sambal, deep fried with batter, fried with chilli, etc etc.

No, we didn’t get the Alaskan King Crab or the Lobster…

We did get the Frogs. The below pictures are the before death and after death conditions of the said creatures. I guess I am not getting any brownie points from the animal lovers here.

Before Death

After Death - Sauteed and buried in a nice dark soy sauce and sprinkled with cashew nuts and cut chilli. Let us say that the death of the froggies was not in vain.

Our token vegetables. Cooked in a plain style in anticipation of the heart clogging dishes that will come along.

The La-Las (shellfish) were cooked with sambal. I found them a bit fishy for my liking. Love the sambal though.

Deep fried Crayfish. Sinful, unhealthy, but oh so tempting. Though the portions looked big, there was not much flesh in the shells.

We ended off the meal with the Chilli Crabs and the Pepper Crabs. My preference was for the Pepper Crabs. However, the crabs tasted a bit dull. There were comments that the crab meat did not fit the taste profile of a fresh specimen. Someone put forth the theory that if restaurants were dishonest in serving “live” food to their customers, no one would be the wiser.

The meal came up to less than S$200 for 7 people. And any meal with friends is a good one. A toast to friends, where-ever they might be.