Circle Steam Seafood 圈子老菜 @ Shanghai

I loved steamed seafood if the seafood is fresh. And in China, you can get very reasonably priced live seafood. So these type of steam seafood restaurants just popped up everywhere.

However many did not survived because their standard dropped after a while. But here at Circle Steam Seafood 圈子老菜海鲜蒸坊, the seafood remained live and reasonably priced.

老醋花生 Peanuts in vinegar – a very simple starter for drinking beer with.

熟醉膏蟹 Drunken crab with roe – you marinate steamed roe crab in Shaoxing wine for some time and then you get the drunken crab. Excellent flavour of the wine, and the marination firmed up the flesh of the crab.

基围虾 Sand shrimp – the sand shrimp here was too big, I preferred the ones I had in Shenzhen, smaller and sweeter.

文蛤 Clams – first time I had this clam, very tasty. The flesh is chewy but full of salty flavours of the sea.

蒜蓉竹蛏 Bamboo clam in garlic – overcooked.

蛤蜊 Clams – these sand clams were found every where along the sandbank coast of Shanghai, but now with over shipping and pollution, these were farmed further down south and small.er

红毛蟹 Red hair crab – the crab was sweet, but the shell had no roe though. But it was a tasty crustacean.

东星斑 Red garoupa – I thought it was a much larger garoupa, but once processed it turned to be quite small, all 700g of it. If it was bigger (1kg and above) it would be better.

蟹粉蒸蛋 Steamed egg custard with crab roe – it was completed in a two-step process. First you steam the eggs. It reminded me of how my mum will steam eggs.

Then part two, crab roe was poured on top of the half-steamed eggs and steamed for a further couple of minutes, and you get a really tasty steamed egg custard with crab roe.

海鲜粥锅底 Seafood porridge – This was the perfect end of the dinner. Unlike others, they actually added prawns and a whole swimmer crab into the porridge. Not sure how fresh they were but it was all welcomed. All the goodness of the seafood that we have been steaming the whole time just dripped into the base porridge and gave it the umami. Our group finished every last drop of the porridge.

The service at this place was very good. There’s always something on offer. We had the garoupa at half price, and the red hairy crab was on offer too. So the dinner came up to around ¥200 per person, which was quite good for the amount of seafood we had. Will return.

圈子老菜海鲜蒸坊(番禺路店)
番禺路店3号裙房2楼
Tel : 021-62299396

Date Visited : Apr 2019