If they were impressed, and add Norwegian red king crab to their menus, they could prove the salvation of Norway’s marine life.

That is because the red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus) is not really Norwegian but an avaricious alien introduced to the Barents Sea by Josef Stalin.

Of late, millions of these monsters have been marching south along the coast of Norway, devouring everything in their path. Already they have overwhelmed the fishing ports of northern Norway and advanced more than 400 miles (640km) southwards as far as the Lofoten Islands.

Pascal Proyart, the chef at One-O-One, the top seafoood restaurant in Knightsbridge, which hosted the tasting, considers this an opportunity to popularise an ingredient that has provided his bestselling dishes for 16 years.

He said yesterday: “We sell 45 to 60 kilos of these giant crabs each week and many customers order both starters and main courses made with the meat. It is very versatile; you can use different parts of the animal for different dishes, and a single crab can easily feed a party of eight or ten.”

The one displayed in Mr Proyart’s kitchen yesterday measured, including its gangling but meat-filled legs, about a metre across but was no more than average size for the species, which can weigh up to 25lb (12kg) and have a claw-span of a metre and a half. A snap of the giant’s claws can break a man’s finger, and it is virtually omnivorous, thriving on kelp, dead fish, seaweed, fish eggs and almost anything else that it can find on the floor of the ocean.

Norwegian marine experts say that the crabs have no natural predators and threaten some of the world’s richest fishing grounds. But Mr Proyart enthused: “This crab tastes better than lobster. The long legs are tubes full of meat. Unlike the Cornish edible crab, the king crab has little cartilage. There is more than a kilo of meat in each crab.”

Because of their inconveniently long legs the king crabs are usually imported frozen into Britain with their limbs removed and arranged in boxes.

The Norwegians started commercial fishing of the species only in 2002, but now they aim to remove 280,000 male crabs a year from their waters. Experts, though, say that there are at least 50 million of the creatures on the move, and that the population is exploding.

Nonetheless king crab is an expensive, if luscious, item. At One-O-One, crab-based starters, chilled or grilled with various sauces, cost £19.

A PINCH OF SALT

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