Fatty Crab – Malaysian – West Village

Click on the URL for Fatty Crab, and you’re met with a tiny yellow crab that turns into a giant yellow crab and fills the entire screen with its creepy crabbiness. Pretty foreboding for someone who’s only now getting used to eating sea meats at all, right?

Yet I still agreed to go with my friend Ash, and we still had a flavorful–and of course fatty–lunch.

watermelon juice

So sweet and refreshing, we had to have two.

steamed pork buns

I’m of the mind that pork buns may be the best thing ever introduced to the American palate. The super-soft white bread is so sweet, and the pork belly is always so tender in a way your mama only wishes she could get her homemade chops. These were your standard sweet syrupy variety, but the herb salad with onion and hard-boiled egg was new to me. I’m so easily won over by herbs.

green mango with chili-salt-sugar

The green mango is very similar in taste and texture to an apple, and who doesn’t love dipping apples in sweet/salty things? The weird thing about this was that the heat of the chili hit me really late. The sugar made the crunchy, salty mango immediately sweet, but the chili was almost an aftertaste. I kind of wanted more just so I could get the tastes all at once, but my mouth was on fire, so I guess I was already getting plenty without my tastebuds realizing it.

fatty sliders

A combination of spiced pork and beef makes these little burgers juicy and flavor-packed. The spicy chili-aioli and the cool almost-a-cucumber pickle on top perfectly complimented each other.

Fazio Farms fatty duck

I kind of drool on myself a little just looking at this photo. The duck is steamed and fried and served over “popped tamaki”, which sound exciting but are, um, rice kernels. Ash tried her hardest to give me a good hunk of her duck, but there are some things chopsticks aren’t meant for. What I did get was fatty, sweet, and actually quite tender, once we were able to tear it apart.

Fatty Crab didn’t blow my mind, but I love a restaurant that can use Asian flavors in a way that doesn’t intimidate diners; even the pickiest of my Ohio friends would find familiarity in all of the dishes we had. Next time, obviously, we have to get the crab and try some of the noodles. And I’m bringing my own watermelon for them to squeeze if it happens to not be in season then.