Love Seafood Batam Centre — Restaurant in Batam City

Here's what we ordered: Fresh Oysters Sambal Kangkong Spicy Saba Gong gong Seafood Fried Rice Baby squid

Drinks: Heineken Mango juice Longan basil seeds

Saturday, 29 April 2023.

It was our first time dining at this restaurant since our hotel staff recommended this place. I also saw many good reviews for this place so we decided to have our dinner here. First impression was good. Clean place, good atmosphere, very spacious and airy.

Here's the problem. Take note of our order above. We were surprised that our drinks did not come first, but rather the fresh oysters. Okay.. I guess that's fine, it's a nice appetizer to start with. However, the oysters were very...small.

Our supposed baby squid came but we were served fried calamari. Maybe they didn't have baby squid in the menu so we were served the calamari... but it's still fine, it was nice and the batter was crispy. Would have been nice if the staff told us that they didn't have our requested dish in the menu but they didn't :(

After a while, our Kangkong came. Notice how I did not mention "Sambal Kangkong"? Yes. We were only served Kangkong. No Sambal. Instead, there were only garlic bits and it tasted salty. During the ordering process the staff did ask us if we wanted it spicy and that's what we agreed on. Maybe their definition of spicy is... this?

Oh yes, the drinks. It finally came after 3 dishes. Nothing much to say about the drinks though, it's good. A couple of minutes later we were served our Saba fish. The taste was really nice since it was grilled, but.. the "Spicy" Saba was not spicy at all. My mom was able to eat it with no issue (and she has horrible spice tolerance).

Anyway, here's the issue. We were apparently served plain rice even though we ordered Seafood Fried Rice. When the plain rice bucket was given to us, my father repeatedly told the staff to take the bucket away and serve us the fried rice because we did not order plain rice. However, despite so many of them telling us that they'll take away the bucket and serve us fried rice, they seem to keep getting distracted and preoccupied with incoming customers and ended up forgetting our order again (AND taking away the bucket..). We were already done eating our previous orders and even after almost half an hour, the fried rice AND our gong gong was not served.

One of the trainees, Michael, was very kind enough to show us the paper that had our order written down. Apparently, the fried rice was not added which explained the really long wait. Anyway, since it was our holiday and we were very understanding, my father told him one last time to bring the fried rice, gong gong and take away the plain rice bucket.

After quite a long while, the fried rice FINALLY came. We were so glad that it tasted really good and we loved it. However, the gong gong was not served at all so we unfortunately had to cancel it.

Anyway, I typed out this really long review because this restaurant has so much potential and I want them to improve their efficiency. Maybe we were just really unlucky but me and my family were very patient since we saw a few trainees and most of the staff were quite young. My dad is also fluent in their language so there's very low chances of any language barrier issues during communication.

If you're coming to this restaurant, just make sure the staff repeats your order. We also forgot to ask them to do that so don't make that mistake. Overall I'd give 2 stars out of 5. The cats...

6.30pm weekday still many seats, no reservation needed, free seating outdoors. Great for big groups of people!

Luckily they provided gloves and tissues for us to use. Their utensils are clean and rice was given to us in a bucket. Had to wait about 20-30 minutes for the food to be cooked piping hot to serve. You can order any drinks you like too.

There are many flies and smokers who smoke freely so the environment is not the best. The staff are very helpful and responsive.

Minimum weight to order crabs is 500grams. Flower crab had less meat, I would recommend that you order the big Sri Lankan mud crabs.

Ordered Pepper and butter flower crab. The crab was fresh, meat was sweet and it was flavourful. The sauces were sooooo yummy with steamed rice.

Pepper sauce wasn’t too spicy. The butter sauce was amazing, it had onion, garlic and shallots. The crab was deep fried with a coat of flour then cooked with the aromatic butter mixture.

They also have deep fried mantou, which is a steam bun. Must order as this goes great with the crab gravy.

Their salted egg prawn was really nice, it had a condensed milk taste too. Sweet. The prawns are fresh but it’s not peeled. Highly recommended for you to eat the prawn head and legs that’s coated with the sauce with the shrimp meat.

Their Kang Kong (morning glory) is spicy with their sambal balachan! Very aromatic and quite spicy but its has the wok hei aroma! Also ordered grilled balachan stingray and it was also very delicious.

We were recommended their chicken but...

With more than 3k reviews, you'd expect this place to be of a certain standards. It's a little further out of the main area of Batam, but nothing that a short car ride won't be able to get you to.

One word of caution, is that this place is hyper local. It's so local, that I can't remember the last time finding a place like this through Google Maps got me this excited. Taste profile is also much more local comparatively to the other larger seafood restaurants. That said, to each their own, I'd still come to try once, just so soak up the ambience and atmosphere. Taste wise, it's more Indonesian and less "refined".

They don't do reservations. You walk in, try to find a table, and then sit down. People share tables and move tables around to make it more communal.

No prices on the menu, but we paid 40 SGD for the 2 of us - not sure if there's a local-local price but this is good enough for me, for the amount of food we had. Sambal kangkong was 1.50 SGD, yes 15k IDR, shocking.

Not many servers speak English there, and accordingly majority of the patrons are local Indonesian families. But, you can always point at the menu, and pray for the best.

People do smoke on their tables. If you're trying to find the no smoking zone, good luck.

Also, they host banquets here. A large part of their restaurant grounds, are structured to accommodate large celebrations. Birthdays, weddings, or just huge family affairs, are all...