Bibs and napkins, sticky fingers, hullabaloo: Is this the messiest meal in Sydney?

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“Make a mess,” says Andy Zhan. “Don’t worry about the tablecloth.” I’m not worried about the tablecloth. If I’m going to make a mess – and Singapore chilli crab is the messiest meal on earth – I’m worried about my shirt.

Next, I’m handed a plastic bib to tie around my neck. Emblazoned on it is the cheery face of the restaurant founder, the late Harry Lau, in a small act of continuity that gives the new Harry’s Singapore Chilli Crab in Potts Point a sense of history.

It’s been 41 years since Harry opened the first Harry’s in Eastlakes in 1982, and 31 years since he moved it to Surry Hills. Sadly, he died in 2020 at the age of 79. Son-in-law Zhan took over the business, and recently moved Harry’s to a site off Macleay Street that has been home to a swathe of restaurants since it was the Japanese Edosei in the 1990s.

It’s a pleasant, no-nonsense two-roomed space, fringed by a broad cocktail bar lit by a display of Edison light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. With a stack of eight plastic seafood tubs from the Sydney Fish Market piled up against the picture window, the message is clear. It’s all about the crab, and anything else is incidental.

“Anything else” includes Singapore Sling cocktails, dumplings, crab meat fried rice, Peking duck, salt and pepper calamari, XO oysters with noodles, and live lobster with ginger and shallot.

But back to the live Queensland mud crab, available in 14 different ways, from the famous Singapore chilli sauce to black bean, typhoon shelter or salted egg. The price, says Zhan, fluctuates according to market prices. Tonight it’s $168 a kilogram, and the crab he pulls from the tubs is just under 1 kilogram for two people ($160).

Chef Jacky Huang has been cooking mud crab for Harry’s for 25 years. Longevity counts for little, of course, if you’ve been doing it wrong all that time, but I suspect he has it down pat. All chilli crab recipes owe their life to Madame Cher Yam Tian’s Singapore original, with its dried chillies, soy, garlic, ginger, stock, tomato ketchup and beaten egg. Huang’s version adds three different paprikas.

Tension builds as the waiter drops a bundle of white paper serviettes on the table. Next, a bowl of warm water. I fill in time with a glass of the S.C. Pannell Arido rosé ($16), in which mourvedre, grenache and touriga nacional blend into strawberries and roses.

Then it lands, the shells submerged in the familiar thick, chilli-red sauce flecked with egg. Good chilli crab is a crazy assault on your tastebuds as well as your tablecloth. You have to pick up the too-hot-to-handle cracked crab claws, and tease and suck and pull out the sweet white flesh. Luckily, the shells are expertly cracked to make access easier, and the luridly red, richly sweet sauce is memorable for its warm kick of chilli and hint of vinegar. Then it’s time to mop up with crisp, fluffy little mantou buns (six for $12). It’s full-on, and a barrel load of fun.

Along with the buns, and maybe some fragrant rice ($5), the crab is what you’re here for. If you don’t do the crab, then you’ll probably do OK, but it may not be memorable. Prawn spring rolls (four for $16.80) are the most successful starter. The har gau dumplings (four for $17) I try are well-formed but bland, and mixed vegetables ($24) are mostly snow peas and broccoli.

A generous bowl of slow-cooked and caramelised pork belly ($35) lolling about in sweet soy juices is fine, without being hallelujah. And it’s not the sort of place that does fancy desserts, although there is home-made fried ice-cream available.

All of which goes to show the folly of dining at Harry’s Singapore Chilli Crab and not ordering Harry’s Singapore chilli crab.