Taman Laut Handayani Seafood Restaurant Labuan Bajo — Restaurant in Flores

Two of us for dinner. Ordered 4 main dishes and a drink each. Value for money depends what you usually spend on dinner. This was a bit more than what we paid for other meals in the area, we did get 4 mains though, but portion weren't big. We walked in and the first member of staff that acknowledged us huffed at us to move in a direction she was pointing and walked off. We stood about for a minute unsure if to sit at a table or not as most had reserved signs. Eventually our waiter came and he was nice. Friendly and good English. We ordered drinks, then our waiter told us mine was not available, out of stock. So I ordered something else. But an hour later or so when leaving I saw the fridge at the till had plenty of bottles of what I ordered in there. Strange. All four dishes were cold, at very most ever so slightly warm. Everything was smaller than the photo on the menu (we had read reviews saying this so had ordered 4 dishes because of this and 4 was enough for us) nothing stood out in flavour, it was all just average. After taking our order he re read it which was correct but when it came out one dish was wrong. Squid instead of prawns. When we told him he was pretty surprised and didn't immediately offer to change it for the correct dish (we felt he wanted us to keep the squid) but eventually did offer to change it after we suggested we wanted the dish we ordered. He explained it might take some time and we said that was okay. And to be fair it didn't take too long anyway so that was fine. When we ordered it he had asked how spicy and we said only a little spicy. The squid dish came out not spicy (we ate one piece each to confirm it wasn't prawn as it didn't look like prawn) but when the prawn dish eventually came out omg it was on fire!!! Guessing he hadn't passed on the not spicy message and I couldn't eat much of it but my partner could manage it. Our waiter was nice but pretty much everyone else we saw looked pretty fed up and like they couldn't be bothered. I wouldn't recommend to go as a small group or couple. Lots of big long tables booked out so maybe good for...

Came here with high expectations after seeing all the raving reviews, was left rather disappointed.

It took ages to get attention from the staff - they had a lot of staff rushing about but we had to call them multiple times.

The food took more than 30mins to arrive. The staff recommended us to order 5onz of lobsters, when we checked the printed ticket and the lobsters weren’t listed so we checked with the staff again. It appeared that the order wasn’t put in since the first staff we came across told us it was sold out, and upon saying that his colleague told us he’d place the order for us, the staff gathered and seemed quite frantic about it - seems like the order was not put in, but they managed to get our lobsters after 20min.

The food itself was disappointing as well. The Ikan Segara Indonesia (135K / porsi) looked sad, almost like it was half eaten (refer to image). The taste was alright but portion was small and presentation was poor. We were expecting more fish based on the pictures in the menu.

We also got the Grilled Squid with Honey. It arrived cold and the meat was tough - we struggled to cut it with a fork and knife.

Kang Kong was alright - hard to go wrong with vegetables

Lobster was slightly overcooked, but at least the sauce was nice. It was not cheap though, going for a total of 750,000 for 2 as shown in the image.

The staff seemed forgetful as well - we asked for the fire to be relit for the fish, since it went off, she said OK but never came back. I also ordered a watermelon juice which seemed to have been forgotten - I waited about 20min and asked to staff to check on it, and he arrived with the juice almost immediately.

We left dissatisfied and went elsewhere for more food - we didn’t want to order more since we didn’t want to wait...

If you want to view the sunset in peace without anyone telling you, you can’t sit at the different tables closest to the part of the restaurant overlooking the sea, harbour and with sunset views, then Taman Laut is NOT the place to be.

I reached the restaurant at 5:45pm to see the sunset. Those tables were empty and no one was allowed to sit on them until a tour group arrived at 7:15pm. How hard is it to do a simple turnover of a table and maybe tell us that “you can sit at this table but we would require it back by 6:45/7pm.” It only takes 15 mins to set up. I’m a restaurateur myself so this aspect really annoyed me. And also, this would have resulted in more sales because it would have a faster turnover of at least 15 tables. And most importantly, your customers would go back happy.

Next, I went back to sit on the assigned table that they gave me, and no one came to take my order. Their staff is walking around, but they’re so unaware or lackadaisical, it doesn’t matter to them if they serve you or not. I had to wait for half an hour (30 mins) before someone even noticed I was seated and came to take my order.

I had ordered for a satay, and immediately after I placed the order, I reached out to my server asking if they could change it to a nasi goreng with satay instead. They point blank refused. They wouldn’t even go into the kitchen to let the chef know to halt the order, they kept standing and arguing with me about how they can’t change an order, which is so surprising because all POS systems have a “void” functionality.

Anyways, it truly is a tourist trap. While the views are amazing, I’m sure you can get sunset views with better vibes, quality service, and good hospitality elsewhere, I would avoid...