Head to the capital for the cream of the crustacean crop.

As we near the end of crab season, it’s time to get your fill of giant, king, blue, snow and Dungeness. And with a new breed of restaurants in London with the crustacea at their core, the capital is the place to do so. So, ready your hammer and steady the trident, because you’re about to tuck into a feast worthy of Neptune himself.

Like so many restaurants in London, Claw started life as a roving street food hermit, trading sites before angel investors swooped in to give it their backing. The restaurant now has a permanent site in the city and is about to sidle on to Carnaby Street to set up in a second home. It started life in 2015 when owner Mr Fabian Clark realised that 80 per cent of the UK’s finest crabs were exported to Europe and Asia. He looked to stem the flow and hijack their departure, finding welcome homes for carefully extracted crab meat in brioche buns and pulled through mac ‘n’ cheese. It’s open for breakfast, serving a standout smoked maple bacon and scallop English muffin – enough to wipe away any hangover – and excellent crab cheese toasties through the afternoon and into the night.

**1 Finsbury Avenue Square ** Find out more here

Best described as an upmarket diner (with prices to match), Fancy Crab is an American import serving primarily red king crab, which many say is the best in the world. These magnificent creatures are only harvested once a year from the brackish North Pacific waters around Alaska. They can grow up to five feet across and the leg meat is the real prize. Purists insist on serving them straight up, boiled in salty water then presented on a mound of ice and lackadaisically doused in thyme butter though, in our opinion, they’re just as good deep fried in a light tempura batter, smothered in lime mayonnaise and packed inside a buttery brioche bun.

**92 Wigmore Street ** **Find out more here **

You might refer to the City of London’s Broadgate Circle as an amphitheatre of excess. On any given weeknight, expect to see bankers, insurers and financiers ejected from skyscrapers into this circular pit of bars and restaurants, ready to hand company cards to bartenders and rack up serious bills. Crab Tavern is on hand to help them do just that. This is crab-based cuisine for the drinker, serving king crab in myriad guises of breadcrumbs and batter, ready to soak up premium-strength lager and mid-range pinot grigio. Best Legs In Town is our pick: four sizeable appendages served with a choice of mayo or garlic butter.

**7 Broadgate Circle ** Find out more here

For an idea of this restaurant’s style, see “nautical” in any interior design handbook. Fishing nets hang from walls, Breton stripes pervade and there’s enough portholes and polished brass to make the QE II blush. The produce is second to none. Quality Selsey cock crab is delivered by the trawler load, boiled, and served with chips as salty as a day out in Boulogne. The tasty brown meat is decadently dressed, with the legs served with hammer and tongs to administer your own extraction. The wine list is reasonably priced and – believe us – you’ll be needing a good few glasses to quench your thirst from the chips that you’ll be unable to stop eating.

**22 Bateman Street ** Find out more here

Head into the bowels of Wright Brothers’ Spitalfields site and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d descended to Atlantis. It houses the largest collection of shellfish and oyster tanks in the city and now supplies some 300 of London’s best restaurants with carefully curated crustacea. Fifteen species of oyster are available on any given day, chosen from the 9,000 creatures in the tanks downstairs, and make the perfect start to the meal. Our dish of the day is always crab croquettes, stuffed to the gunnels with juicy brown crab meat and the perfect foil for a warm-up glass of fizz. Follow that up with Devon crab, lemon mayonnaise, tomato and dill.

** 8a Lamb Street, Old Spitalfields Market**

Find out more here