Love Seafood: This Restaurant in Batam (Indonesia) Serves the Freshest Seafood!
When people travel to Indonesia, they usually go to Bali, Jakarta, and Yogyakarta. But have you heard of Batam?
Batam is a city and island located in the Riau Archipelago in west Indonesia. It’s just a one-hour ferry ride away from Singapore. Since it’s near the Lion City, Singaporeans go to Batam for a weekend getaway, as the prices there are way lower than in their home country.
I haven’t been to Indonesia so we decided to do a side trip to Batam as Singapore. And you know what that means? Batam Food Trip!
And our first stop is in Love Seafood, a chain of seafood restaurants in Batam. It serves the freshest seafood since some of it comes from the aquarium. We went to their Nagoya (officially Lubuk Baja) branch:
The aquarium with live seafood:
So let’s talk about the food, starting with the Salted Egg Squid (Dry). It’s crunchy and has chunks of the salted egg white. The flavor buttery, sweet, and has a nice salted egg taste.
For fish, we tried the Ikan Goreng (fried fish). But we didn’t like it plainly fried. So even though it’s not in the menu, we asked for fried garlic on it and the staff accommodated our request. And it turned out to be the best fried fish we’ve ever had!
It’s perfectly fried, and the flesh is juicy and tender. The garlic bits are crunchy and, I suspect, is battered, which is interesting.
A common seafood in Batam is Gong Gong, an edible sea snail found in the waters of Southeast Asia.
We tried it rebus (steamed) style, which comes with a super spicy sauce. It has a seafoody taste. This is one is not for me. LOL.
For vegetables, Kangkung Polos (water spinach with garlic). The water spinach is crisp and the flavor is garlicky. I’m just not sure why the sauce is unappetizingly black. LOL.
Of course, we had to try the Nasi Goreng Telur (egg fried rice). If you don’t know yet, nasi goreng or fried rice is considered the national dish of Indonesia.
Love Seafood’s version is tasty and unusually moist (I’m used to fried rice that is on the drier side).
We had refreshing drinks to wash down all the seafood:
Love Seafood serves fresh seafood that are prepared well at affordable prices. Our entire meal only costs 500,000 Indonesian Rupiah, which is slightly above 1,700 Philippine Pesos or almost 28 U.S. Dollars (as of the time of this writing). It’s one of the best meals we’ve had in Batam, and so I highly recommend it to you!
For Love Seafood branches and operating hours, visit their Website. (Each branch has its own Facebook and Instagram page.)