Jukung Bali Seafood — Restaurant in Kuta

Take Note that once again Local Guides are giving this place a high amount of stars, while you... the average tourist... is giving this restaurant very low rankings. Our local guide took us here on our last day and it was the worst restaurant we have been to by far, which makes me think they are definately getting a cut. Be warned. If your taxi driver tries taking you here, get back in and tell him you want to LEAVE NOW.

Now onto the review. This place is almost surreal, you get out and walk into what looks like a fish aquarium where you can select a live fish or dead fish.

You are taken to your table on the beach which sounds nice except the beach is covered in rubbish. In front of you and next to you see bits of plastic bags and other rubbish blowing in the wind next to your feet with a look over the brown coloured polluted ocean. Overhead you watch as planes take off the from the international airport. Oh the serenity.

Then you are given the menu. Basically you pay for the weight of an entire fish by the 100 grams so guessing how much you'll end up paying when you actually get the fish is a crapshoot (guess: expensive). The Bingtang's are the most expensive I've seen in all of Bali which makes it all so much worse as this was also the worst restaurant I've been to in all of Bali. It also according to the person I was traveling with had the worst bathroom we've seen in Bali which is saying something.

Once you've decided which fish you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money for you go to the front counter and select your fish... either one from the murky fish tank or one sitting in a bucket of ice with other dead fish. Then then bring you the meal which is basically the fish cut in half, smothered in sauce and (over)cooked on a grill. They also bring out a container of rice and some beans which weren't very nice. And a bit of garnish. And that's it.

What surprised me the most about this whole thing was there were other tourists sitting there from other countries who seemingly were okay with sitting on this disgusting beach paying sky high prices... completely oblivious to how ridiculous it all was. Talk about low expectations. Once again... totally surreal.

If I was to say something nice about this place it was the Balinese singers who were singing that night were actually quite good, doing many different English songs. But it certainly wasn't worth the cost. Go elsewhere and don't let your Taxi Driver...

We were taken here by our driver after I specifically requested a really nice location for seafood on the beach.

Sadly the restaurant itself was unimpressive and perhaps being on the beach would have been a nice atmosphere but we were seated insides due to poor weather. Obviously I don’t fault the restaurant for weather but there were dozens of other restaurants along the beach so I’m sure there were plenty of others to choose from.

This one offered seafood in big platters, which sounded good on paper but there’s no option to choose how it’s cooked. They come out all grilled and sort of dry tasting with one flavour. The fish was greatly over cooked and didn’t taste that fresh.

The platters we chose were recommended by the staff and supposed to contain lobster, crab and prawn amongst other things. After we ordered, another staff member came and told us that crab wasn’t available and they could substitute for prawns. Why suggest the platters to us if they couldn’t make them?? We told them we didn’t find this to be an appropriate substitute and would rather leave for somewhere that did have crab and then magically, they materialised some crab.

The whole thing seemed fishy (excuse the pun) and left the group feeling negative about being there. Thinking back, I’m quite sad our driver took us there as I had trusted his judgment but I’ve since read that drivers get a big commission for taking guests to this restaurant. It stinks of tourist trap and I just...

I’ll start by saying I’ve heard about the taxi/restaurant relationships here where your driver will take you somewhere specifically because they then give him a cut and/or feed them. When we sat down we were handed two menus with pricing that seemed a bit high we decided this perhaps wasn’t our evening dining spot so we walked back to the front and asked where our driver was who was waiting for us (also from Nusa Dua to Jimbaran he didn’t want to use the meter instead a flat 100,000 IDR to the restaurant plus 5,000 IDR to get into the Jimbaran beach area). When we got to the front he was in a back waiting area busy... so we just decided to sit down so we wouldn’t miss the sunset. The family next to us was also looking at their menus ordering when the woman with them was nice enough to get up and ask to see our menu because ours looked different than hers- the same menu platters on ours with 6 mussels, 9 prawns, lobster, fish, calamari was a price difference of $250,000 IDR!!! So if you come here for the basic seafood platter and you get the menu that says all that with two soft drinks for $800++ your getting played. Overall we were happy with the food and setting it just didn’t sit right with me about the dishonesty- when we asked to see the other menu the server got VERY upset and walked away heated but didn’t say anything rude directly too us. Eat at will y’all- but watch out for...