I have crabs

Long Beach's chili crabs don't disappoint. You can always expect them to do it right because after all, it is their signature dish. And you should always get a lot of fried buns to go along with the incredible gravy and in fact, I will pay just to eat the fried buns by themselves because they are that good.

The best meat is in the pincers but like so many other "best" things, you have to work hard to get it. And I don't think crabs would taste as good if we don't have to use our mental and physical strength as much.

Because of how lightly fragmented the shell was, I had to perform what amounted to a mini engineering project to remove the shell. First, I had to find that one fragment of shell that was the main cause of my Crustacean Frustration (New band name). Then I figured that I should unhinge the claws by opening it really wide before I can loosen the main piece of flesh for easy extraction.

That, by the way, would be the equivalent someone stretching your index finger away from your middle one by yanking on them at the same time. But it doesn't matter because it's the crabs' fault for having delicious flesh.

After slightly separating the meat, I pushed that vital piece of shell inwards and then outwards again to jerk it out from its original position and aha! Everything got simple from then on, just brute force required for removing the rest of the hard shell.

All these for the luxury of being able to eat the pincer flesh like a chicken drumstick, to be able to strip the meat off with a single mouthful. Was it worth it?

YES.

(I should have taken pictures of the meat glistening in the light after being liberated from the hard and limiting shell that's holding it back from its ultimate and noble destiny but please, do you really expect me not to eat it immediately after the work?)