Holy Crab — Restaurant in Kep

Ate a mango salad with really fresh squid and small prawns at lunch today. Had to come back for dinner… Holy Crab is the flashiest looking restaurant on the strip but their pricing is on par with most other places alongside them so don’t be put off and immediately think it’ll blow your budget. The venue is clean, well designed, has good furniture (no miss matching chairs here) and ‘holy crap’ the ablutions are also spotless! It gets better though… I hate getting presented a dirty and trashy looking menu with dog eared pages (and so often it’s presented upside down in a casual ‘here it is’ manner) - well not here at Holy Crab. The menu pages are clean as a whistle, well laid out and presented correctly. The owner/manager has trained his staff exceptionally well right through the whole process of greeting and seating to taking the order, setting the table…everything. And, then there’s the food. I’ve already mentioned the US$4 mango salad at lunch - every ingredient on the plate was fresh and delicious. Dinner - the same - fresh and wonderfully crafted on the plate. Three prawns (thoughtfully peeled) and three pieces of squid tube nicely grilled and served with a Kampot pepper based dipping sauce. Main course of a snapper curry w/ vegetables and a side of steamed rice was generous in size and well cooked. The chef at Holy Crab knows her cooking techniques. I couldn’t fault a thing. Worth repeating visits if you’re a solo diner like me, but in a group try more of the many...

Holy Crab is an absolute gem and has quickly become one of my all-time favorite restaurants. While its surroundings might not do it justice, the restaurant itself is a true standout. We had dinner for seven and ordered family-style with five entrées, three appetizers, rice, and drinks. The total bill was just $110 (before tip)—an incredible value.

The menu is phenomenal. We loved every single dish, even the pasta, which we weren’t expecting to be great here—it turned out to be some of the best pasta we’ve ever had. The flavors, variety, and quality were exceptional across the board.

The restaurant is cozy and charming inside, with an amazing view of the water and stunning sunsets. This kind of culinary and waterfront experience in the U.S. would easily cost over $400 for a group of seven, making Holy Crab a standout for both quality and affordability.

I can’t recommend Holy Crab enough. If you’re in the area, it’s an absolute must-visit. We loved it so much, we’re already planning to go...

Far too expensive for the quantity and quality of the food. The focus seems to be on presentation and the look of restaurant.

The seafood skewers featured overcooked tough shrimp and small charred slivers of squid for 5$. You can get perfectly good whole squid skewers for 50 cents at the crab market. The shrimp cakes were ok, the sauce was nice.

For mains we had steamed crab meat with green pepper sauce. Though the presentation was nice, the dish was bland. The crab meat didn’t have a lot of flavour (maybe due to steaming) and the sauce was just disappointing. The pepper flavour was barely present, it mostly tasted like cream and wine. Sort of like stroganoff. The portion size was laughable for the price at 13.50$ for a tiny serving. There wasn’t even enough sauce for dipping the rice into.

I’d recommend going a little further into town until you reach the beach. There you’ll get a good sized portion of crab for two people with rice for 10$ and their sauce is...