Baycity Seafood Harbour Bay — Restaurant in Batam City

29 Mar 24: Came here on a Friday for dinner with another friend. The restaurant only about half full so we thought it's a good chance to try out this place since the quite a number of bad reviews of the restaurant is due to its slow service. We were about 70% full from our last tea session so we thought it should be ok to wait for a couple of minutes for the food to arrive ... I mean, how bad could it be?

We ordered the following: Gong gong (some kind of sea snail) Crab meehoon Balitong White rice Bintang beer x2 (in cans)

After waiting for about 35 mins, the gong gong came. It's steamed and tasted fresh. But we thought it's served rather slow/late as the restaurant wasn't even full.

After 10 mins, the crab meehun came. This dish is great! Very flavourful and tasty. Definitely our favourite here. Would recommend to order this if you're here. One crab weighs about 0.5kg. They charge 400k IDR per kg. So our crab dish was 200k IDR.

We then waited for another 20 mins but our last dish (and our rice!) have not arrived yet. By now we're already hungry. We called for a waiter and told them were still missing dishes, and ordered another fried sotong (squid).

After about 10 mins (surprisingly rather quick), the waiter came with our fried sotong and rice. We were told that the balitong has finished and it would be cancelled from our order. Ok, fine, we thought, at least the sotong came. But when we tasted it, it was only lukewarm. Doesn't taste like it's freshly fried from the oven. Disappointing!

We then called for the bill, and friends, please check your bill before paying. The balitong that didn't arrive was still charged to our bill. We informed the waiter and they removed it from our bill.

In summary, please only come here if you have a lot of free time to wait. If you have gastric or anything of the same sort, please fill your stomachs first before coming 😐, if you really want to try our this place.

Also note that there is no pricing at all for their entire menu. Better ask for the pricing prior to ordering.

Only giving the ⭐ for...

It's difficult to pick a good seafood restaurant in Batam as there are so many, but we were recommended Bay City Live Seafood by our driver/guide.

Unfortunately, there was nothing particularly fantastic about this seafood restaurant - while the food was tasty enough (you can give the black pepper crayfish a go), the pricing was average and communication was difficult as the staff did not speak English. While we were fortunate to have our guide translate initially, subsequent service was difficult once our guide had left. It did not help either that prices were not labelled clearly or not even labelled at all in their menu. We avoided ordering too much seafood, as it would be charged by weight and we were concerned with the lack of transparent pricing.

We also had a similar experience to the earlier Google review on being served cabbage when we ordered kailan... Similarly, they also told us this was 'white kailan' / 'baby kailan', which is different from the greener kailan we would eat in Singapore. Despite our doubts and misgivings, the dish was tasty enough and we did not want to cause trouble or ruin our vacation, so we accepted it as it was and finished our meal.

We paid about 1,00,000 IDR for 8 dishes and...

Located by the coast, we settled on a table overlooking the sea. It was very windy on the evening we were there and there weren’t many diners on that weekday evening.

We had clams, fried chicken in salted egg sauce, fried baby octopus, tofu with minced meat sauce, sambal kang kong, and cereal prawns with rice for 4 of us. Overall, the food was above average, not overly greasy. Sambal kang Kong wasn’t too spicy too. My favourite is the steamed clams, which was topped generously with chopped garlic and the tofu, which is silky and soft. The fried baby octopus is very crispy and well seasoned. Overall, we pretty much enjoyed the food and were all stuffed. However, we became pretty thirsty later in the night, so I guess the meal must have quite a bit of MSG added, which I’m sensitive to.

One thing to note is that the prices were not indicated in the menu, so you can ask before ordering. As this is our second time eating here and we felt that the price was reasonable the first time round, so we just ordered without asking. Not exactly the cheapest among the many seafood restaurants in Batam, but it is sure...