MOST people would probably say that the best local seafood restaurants are in the East Coast.
But my favourite actually lies in another part of the island. Through the 1990s until recently, it was the Long Beach restaurant in Marina South.
It boasted a good variety of live seafood, displayed in rows of tanks at the entrance, and the chef turned them into the most delicious dishes.
The only drawback was that the place, located on a piece of reclaimed land that was still awaiting proper development, was far from the buzz of the city.
But that is no longer a problem.
A month ago, the restaurant moved to Tanglin Village, the most happening food enclave, and is now known as Long Beach @ Dempsey.
Located next to Samy's Curry, it is housed in a long narrow building with a small air-conditioned dining room and many more tables lined along an open-air balcony outside that lead to a few semi-private VIP rooms at the end.
The place looks more modern and spruced up than the old Marina South premises but the ambience is still dominated by the chatter of noisy groups occupying big, round tables and busy waiters weaving their way from the kitchen with platters of food.
There are fewer fish tanks and they are relegated indoors, where they line one wall of the dining room.
All the classic dishes Long Beach is famous for are still on the menu, from its chilli crab to the prize-winning black pepper crab.
But at a dinner last week, I decided to try something different for a change and asked for my crab to be fried with white pepper instead.
I had tasted the restaurant's peerless white pepper sauce only with Alaskan king crab before, which had never failed to impress.
But the mammoth king crab is often big enough for a table of 10, so for my group of four, I had a more manageable Sri Lankan crab ($36 for 1kg).
It turned out beautifully, with the tasty pepper sauce adding a punch to the flavours, and yet light enough not to mask the natural sweetness of the crustacean.
I had crab in another dish too - the claypot XO Sri Lankan yellow roe crab with beehoon ($28) which was recommended by the waitress as one of the chef's new creations.
I have had crab beehoon soup in other eateries before but the version here truly deserved its XO tag: It was certainly extraordinary.
The crab was not very big but it was packed with roe which turned the stock a milky orange colour. And the stock had the distinctive aroma of shellfish which made it irresistible to any seafood lover.
Another dish I tried for the first time - the humble-sounding handmade beancurd with chef's sauce ($2 a piece) - was just as memorable.
It was a small, deep-fried block of beancurd topped with thin strips of cucumber. A little piquant Thai sauce was drizzled on top before the beancurd was covered with chicken floss.
It sounded simple but the combination of smooth beancurd, sweet floss and lime-laced sauce was a total palate-pleaser.
One other new creation was the 'Dong Po' ribs with honey sauce ($3.60 a piece). The sweet sauce clinging to the meat was thick and tasty, and the idea of using ribs instead of belly pork for the dish was perhaps a healthier alternative.
But it lacked the melt- in-the-mouth texture you get with slow-cooked fatty meat. So I'd rather have the artery-clogging version on rare occasions.
Besides, there are better dishes to indulge in at Long Beach.
For example, you can always go back to its renowned crispy duck ($32). I first ate this dish back in the 1980s when there was a Long Beach branch in Stadium Road.
The duck was fragrant from the spices it was steamed with before being deep-fried to a perfect crisp. Dipped in a sweet dark sauce, it was yummy, and often even the bones were crispy enough to chew on.
On a nostalgic whim, I ordered the dish again last week. It was still as good.
