Monday, September 01, 2008

A Bintan resort lunch


I'm not sure what's the status of this place, but it is one of those pseudo kelong built along some rock outcroppings close to the shoreline connected to the beach via a bridge kind of place. Half the structure was probably concrete. There wasn't much options for eating out from the resort since the closest location for a food place (Melayu Square) was a 45 minute drive out of Bintan Beach & Agro Spa Resorts. It was definitely a place opened by the resort itself and the only live seafood available were crabs.


The food was passable with a pretty regular stir fried kailan, a fairly spicy tom yum soup that was heavy on tomato & lemongrass and a rather well done sambal kang kong which was crunchy and had a robust hit of dried shrimps. Of worthy mention, there was a sun and moon fried rice (woah!) and a butter oat squid.


The mentioned sun and moon fried rice was stir fried with coconut milk. That was probably the most distinctive thing about it, evident from the taste that was certainly more flavourful (and rich as well) than the the regular seafood counterpart which became quite boring by comparison. Speaking of seafood, there was barely anything beyond some small chopped pieces of shrimp in the rice. I had definitely expected better. Frutti di mare aside, the damp rice was quite enjoyable. Those butter oat squids were similar to cereal-ed seafoods that one can find easily in our local restaurants. The main difference was the use of quite a bit of eggs in the mix with the oats that formed the batter of the squids. And this is the first time I'm eating these cereal seafood done on squid. Nutty, sweet and mildly spicy, this was actually quite good.

Also, I now know that I can give their local beer a pass the next time.

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