Saigon Star.

beer crab... My friend Florence recently got into a design school in San Francisco called FIDM (congrats!), so of course we had to go out and celebrate with some good food. She decided on going to a Vietnamese restaurant called Saigon Star, mainly to get the Beer Crab dish that they serve. I had never tried this beer crab previously and was looking forward to a trying a crab cooked inside a broth/ soup made of beer. There were 4 of us (my friends Jess and Dave also), and we ordered about 3 dishes to share.
We ordered a Beer Crab Hot Pot dish ($39.95 + tax/tip for large), which was the definite highlight of the meal. It was literally a giant crab cooked in a large pot with a soup made with beer. The soup itself tasted awesome with lots of crab flavour mixed with a slight taste of beer. There was plenty of flavour in the soup, which was also loaded with vermicelli (which soaked up all the flavour too). Florence taught us how to eat this dish and here's the instructions:

1. Split the Crab up and using the tools they give you (ie. crab cracker..lol.i dunno if that's what it's called), take out as much meat as you can.
2. Pour out bowls of the soup (including everything in it, vermicelli, veggies, etc.)
3. Place lots of crab meat pieces (from step 1) into each individual bowl and enjoy!

This type of dish is perfect when it is colder outside, as the meal is really hearty and even with the beer in it, it make's you feel nice and warm inside after you eat it.haha. In addition to the beer crab we also wanted some variety and ordered a Vegetable Hot Pot ($9.50 + tax/tip), Curry Beef Brisket ($10.50 + tax/tip) and french bread ($1.50/each + tax/tip) to go with the curry. The vegetable hot pot was a pretty big portion of mixed vegetables (including broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, bok choi, etc) and vermicelli cooked with lots of flavour, tasted kind of like some satay type sauce. The dish was a little oily, but very good anyways. The beef brisket was also really good and it came in a pretty big portion. They warm the french bread up before they serve it so it is nice, soft and goes awesome with the curry. Unfortunately we were all pretty full from the beer crab, haha, so we didn't eat too much of the curry.
Since we came here to get beer crab, we also had to get some beer to drink along with the meal. We had to stick with Viet beer at a Viet restaurant, so we ordered 4 Tiger beers ($4.50/each + tax/tip). Florence also ordered a Vietnamese Ice Coffee ($3.50 + tax/tip). Saigon Star is located in Richmond Hill in a plaza on Highway 7 between Bayview and Leslie (there is also a HSBC in the plaza and it's across the street just West of Commerce Gate). The unique beer crab dish is definitely worth checking out.

Saigon Star Restaurant
113-330 Highway 7 East
Richmond Hill, ON
905-731-7221