Food in Batam

I'll be the first to admit that I always overeat when I am on holiday. How to resist all that tempting food? My mantra is to eat and work it all off when the holiday is over.

I've been running diligently and thanks to the extra calories, I find myself with so much more energy to run. I used to tire out so easily on my normal (meagre) diet, so I guess we must feed the body well if we want to be sporty.

Now back to the food we ate in Batam. Some of our friends are foodies, so they knew exactly what to eat in Batam island. We had seafood dinner at 128 Restaurant at Harbour Front on the first night.

It is not difficult to find good seafood in Batam but be careful not to walk into the tourist traps. Most of the restaurants here cater to hordes of tourist from Singapore, so they pretty much offer the same menu like sambal kangkong, cereal prawns, shellfish, butter crab, steamed fish and steamboat.

You wouldn't believe this but many people (men in particular) love eating blood (cubes) and offal. Our friends were looking forward to a satisfying Bak Kut Teh meal, one that is chockful of blood, liver, kidney and intestines in the flavourful soup.

I do not enjoy eating exotic meat, so I had only the pork ribs.

While offals turn me off, I find myself being drawn to the crepe cart. After trying both the savoury (beef) and sweet (banana and Nutella) versions, I still like the sweet one better.

Eating crepe.

Dinner on the second night at the Grand Duck Restaurant was very good. The roast duck was particularly tender and delicious.

We find the lemon grass chicken very unique and tasty.

The Indonesians love eating deep fried food from fried chicken to keropok (crackers). Even the inoki mushroom (below) is deep fried in palm oil. They remained crispy for a long time. This dish is unhealthy but tasty.

The fried kway teow (rice noodle) with shredded duck meat was surprisingly good.

The best dish was fried fish garnished with fresh mango and pineapple, served with a tangy sauce.

The eggplant was nicely done too. We highly recommend the Grand Duck Restaurant at Nayoga Mall. The food is good and prices reasonable.

Before we took the ferry out of Batam, we lunched at Ayam Penyet Ria at Batam Centre Mega Mall.

I'm not sure if it's the same as the Ayam Penyet Ria outlets in Singapore because while the presentation appears similar, the portions are tiny.

The tahu telor turned out to be something else altogether. While we were expecting a 'nest' of tauhu (bean curd) fried in egg batter, we were served tauhu cubes scattered on top of a small omelette, and garnished with peanut sauce and keropok.

We couldn't get any tickets on the earlier departures, so we had several hours to spare. Some were spent shopping and drinking coffee at J.Co Donuts. Each drink comes with a free sugar glazed donut which was surprisingly soft and tasty.

Our friend insisted that we should try the special mee goreng which turned out to be different from what we have back home. Don't be deceived by the light colour of the noodles. This dish was actually full of flavour, likely due to amount of msg used.

Kuah Bakso (below) seems to be a common food in Batam. I came across several food stalls selling this. They are basically meat (beef) balls. Not my favourite dish.

And what is Indonesian food without nasi goreng? We just had to try a plate before leaving Batam.