Eng Seng Restaurant

Eng Seng Restaurant is a zi char eatery, serving Chinese home-style dishes, and it is best known for black pepper crab. For decades it traded from a corner shophouse at Joo Chiat Place and Still Road. That building was sold in 2025, and the restaurant closed there at the end of August that year.

It has since reopened in a canteen inside an industrial estate at 9007 Tampines Street 93. A food blogger who visited in March 2026 reported that the whole Still Road team had moved across. That includes the head chef behind the pepper crab.

What to order

The black pepper crab is the reason to make the trip. The kitchen uses live Sri Lankan mud crabs. A food blogger found the sauce strongly peppery, with a touch of sweetness and a rich, buttery feel.

Crab is a dinner dish here. At lunch, the menu leans towards simple one-plate rice and noodle meals for people working in the industrial park. At dinner, you can build a full zi char meal around the crab. Dishes diners have ordered include:

• Har cheong gai, deep-fried chicken marinated in fermented prawn paste
• French beans stir-fried with preserved olive leaves
• Seafood mee goreng, a spicy fried noodle dish

Zi char dishes are made for sharing. Come with a few people, so you can order a crab plus two or three other plates.

The setting

This is an industrial estate canteen, not a restaurant dining room. The setting is plain and casual, and the focus is fully on the food. It is well away from the main tourist areas, but it is worth the trip if black pepper crab is high on your list.

If this is your first meal in this kind of place, our guide to the Singapore heartlands explains what to expect in the city's residential towns.

Good to know before you go

• Message the restaurant on WhatsApp to reserve a crab before you go. A food blogger who did this did not have to wait long.
• The canteen sits inside an industrial estate. A taxi or ride-hailing car is the simplest way to get there.
• Crab is not on the lunch menu, so plan your visit for the evening if crab is the goal.

Nearby

Other places to eat in the east include Nyonya Pok Pok Kay and Rajarani Thosai. If you have time before dinner, Pasir Ris Park is the area's large seaside park. For more crab across the island, see our guide to chilli crab and seafood restaurants, or browse all restaurants in Pasir Ris and Tampines.