It borders on cringe, but this international seafood chain restaurant is hat-worthy
Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Crab has a constitution, is home to Crabzilla and feels positively out of place in Melbourne in 2025. But the service is faultless, and all the seafood is exceptionally good.
Seafood$$$
If you live with a crab-obsessive, as I do, you know how difficult it can be to satiate that particular craving. There’s plenty of spanner crab around, and you can buy all kinds of crab at various seafood shops, but the true obsessive wants the full experience of cracking, pulling and excavating, and the particular sense of accomplishment from finding those sweet plump lumps of meat within armoured shells.
That’s not an easy home cooking project, and the places where I’ve had the whole-beast experience in Melbourne have typically delivered meat that’s desiccated once you get to it, or sticks to the shell, or tastes as if it has been frozen and reconstituted more than once.
But here, now, in the Ministry of Crab, comes an international chain that does crab as its speciality. Located on Flinders Lane in a massive space that screams upscale airport lounge (the gleaming kitchen alone is about three times the size of the entire footprint of most Melbourne restaurants), MOC is an import from Sri Lanka, with outposts throughout Asia.
Founded by two famous Sri Lankan cricketers and a chef-restaurateur, the chain is serious about its governmental name and lists a series of articles on its website under the title “Constitution”. These include declarations about promoting the beauty of Sri Lanka, but mainly focus on the quality of the ingredients used: the seafood is always fresh, never frozen; crabs are wild-caught, not farmed; and there is a focus on sustainability throughout. After a pop-up at the casino last year, the brand felt it had enough traction to open a permanent outpost here.
There are so many things about this restaurant that feel positively out of place in Melbourne in 2025. There’s that decor: beige and slick and corporate-fancy, with a soundtrack of jaunty jazz to seal the deal. Cocktails are both well-made and tooth-achingly sweet – there’s no laziness or subpar ingredients, just a style of drinking that’s usually only seen these days when there’s a heavy dose of irony in the glass along with the peach, lychee or what have you.
This straightforward, exceedingly unironic maximalism is part of the charm of MOC. The napkins are folded to look like a collared shirt; waiters are obsequious and have an air of innocence, almost greenness, but are obviously trained exceptionally well. They know the menu back and forth and can talk about it with the fervour of a true believer.
That menu is built of a bunch of starters, the main event (steamed mud crab), and some alternate mains. There’s a truly funky but also oddly elegant crab liver pâté, served with tiny toast squares and palm sugar syrup to add sweetness. A prawn bisque is decadently rich, seafood essence distilled with a hint of curry, and features a huge prawn as a garnish.
I might come here and sit at the bar to eat the Kaphrao crab entree as a main meal – the dish, which is a signature of the MOC in Bangkok and riffs on pad krapow, has tender, ultra-fresh shredded crab meat stir-fried with garlic, chilli and Thai basil, over rice. It’s a bit of a bargain at $32.
The main decision you need to make – the reason you’re here – is to figure out which size of crab you want and what kind of sauce it should come swimming in. Crabs start at “medium” (700-799 grams) and go up to “Crabzilla” (more than two kilograms). An “extra-large” crab, split between two people, was almost a full kilo and felt utterly decadent, more crab than might be appropriate – but the indulgence was giddy fun.
The crab obsessive in your life will have a look of stunned, glazed satisfaction.
You choose from various sauces, the best of which are the black pepper – which showcases the fragrance of that spice and its place in Sri Lankan cooking – and the garlic chilli, which combines the richness of butter with the heat of chilli, plus a thwack of soy for umami.
And here’s the thing about this restaurant: The crab and all the seafood is exceptionally good. They know how to cook these beasts. You can tell no shortcuts are taken – usually the bane of the corporate chain kitchen. The ingredients taste fresh, alive, exciting.
The bulbous claws on these crabs, when you unshell them, might make you blush. The meat is tender and sweet and the crab obsessive in your life will be covered in sauce and have a look of stunned, glazed satisfaction.
I went so far as to order the chicken, in an attempt to see if corners were cut in non-seafood cooking. But no: the skin was crispy, the flesh juicy, the soy-butter sauce pleasant and boring – probably exactly what someone would want if they were eating chicken at a crab restaurant.
This is not a restaurant that is of its time or place. Stylistically, it borders on cringe. But I can find no fault with the actual food or service – this is a case of a company setting out to do something, and achieving exactly that thing. Will it last? Who knows? But if you have a crab obsessive in your life, get them to the Ministry while you can.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Gleaming corporate behemoth
Go-to dishes: Kaphrao crab ($32); prawn bisque ($28); steamed mud crab ($190 a kilogram)
Drinks: Tropical-leaning, very sweet cocktails; short but smart beer selection; wine list with mostly big-name mid-tier labels but also a few interesting finds
Cost: About $300 for two before drinks (less if you forego crab, but what’s the point of that?)
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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