A Bexley restaurateur has labelled his monster crabs "beasts" after landing them from across the globe.

Frank Mestre, 60, owner of the 22-seater Mama Carmen's which is inside the Coach & Horses pub, cooks crabs from Russia, Norway and Alaska.

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Frank Mestre

The restaurant, named after his mother, in North Cray Road, Bexley, started serving the large crabs on October 27.

The Thistlefield Close resident said: “I call the crabs ‘beasts’ because they’re enormous.

“Most are so heavy that whenever I hold one, it feels like I’m going to drop it – it’s at least half the length of my body.

“The whole crab weights six kilos and I’ll tell you now, I wouldn’t want to swim next to one.

“It goes to show that small restaurants, like mine, can be successful if you get the right product which no one else in the Borough has.

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The "beast"

“I introduced the dish last week and I was always confident it would do well because the size of the crabs are so extraordinary.”

Since 1979, Mr Mestre used to have Mama Carmen's chains in Bexley and Dartford that seated 150 people.

He packed that in ten years ago to retire but then got ‘bored’ and reopened his restaurant in the pub.

After moving over to England when he was three-years-old, the Spanish-born chef wanted to follow in his grandparents’ footsteps into the business.

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He added: “I missed the lifestyle of cooking so I wanted to somehow find a way to get back into it.

“If that meant opening up a restaurant inside a pub, that’s what it meant – it might have been a risk but I’ve never looked back.

“Nowadays, the competition is so fierce that you always have to be one step ahead of the rest so I’m happy I have my crabs.”

A main course of “The Beast” is priced at £35 while a starter is £15.