Restoran Balikpapan Seafood

The good thing about Tawau is that you'll find quite a number of places selling Indonesian food, since geographically we are in close proximity to the tiny cities (or is it states?) of Indonesia, Nunukan and Tarakan. It's like, you can practically see them eating their lunches if you stand at the in-famous Traulsen Drive (more on that in a later post) because it's just a stone (or a boat) away from the shores of Tawau. And yes, I'm exaggerating about seeing the latter... ;-)

Speaking of lunches and Indonesian food, let us look at Restoran Balikpapan, which is situated on a commercial area at Jalan Budi (in between Jalan Kuhara, if you're coming from the main traffic lights at Jalan Sin Onn-Apas and Jalan St Patrick, if you're coming from the Fajar Complex). The establishment has been around for a number of years now and I have not been back to the place for sometime due to the place not being in my usual route. But thankfully the quality of the food is still consistent when me and my partner went to their place earlier this week. Now the menu consist of mainly Indonesian food (err, from Balikpapan I guess?) and several typical local food such as fried rice and fried mee. When we went there recently, they're out of they popular dish, the Ayam Bakar (which is definitely finger-licking-good) so we decided to take on the next best thing, their Ikan Baulu Bakar (grilled boneless fish with some seriously lovely gravy), Mee Goreng (which got better in taste - cause I had a pretty bad experience with it previously), Nasi Goreng Jawa (according to my partner, the dish was not as good as it was before) and Ayam Masak Lada Hitam (which is my new fave - I just couldn't get over their delicious black pepper gravy).

** Current status - Still in operation (as of June 2014)