Pick your poison..

Denis driving to the restaurant Bintang in hand - a funny story in itself that I'll share with you sometime :-)
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Hi guys,

It's me again :-)..  I just had to tell you (and show you) about the restaurant Denis took me to on Saturday night.  He'd been told about it and had taken a client there for dinner recently and thought he'd like to share the experience with me as well. And what an experience it was!!

It was quite a large place, plenty of seating, plenty of customers, from families with young children to groups of business people so it's obviously well known and well patronized.  I noticed late in the night that there were even more people there than I thought - there were about a dozen small private dining rooms off the main eating area, each named after a different part of Asia - Singapore, Taiwan, Korea etc.  Each of these rooms held a group of about a dozen people and from what I could see, these were pretty much full, certainly more so than the main restaurant area.

Ever seen a crab like this in Australia? I haven't..
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Despite the reasonable crowd, there were at least 2 or 3 waiting staff dedicated to each table.  If I had to describe the service I'd probably say something like 'annoying' - they were never more than about 2 inches away, either filling your wine glass, replacing your hot towel, changing your plate, something.. I usually find the service in Indonesia fairly laid back but here they were ever vigilant :-), perhaps too much so, but who's complaining..

Anyway, on to the meal.. As you'll see from the pictures, to the side of the main entrance are about 100 tanks containing different seafood.  You can stand and browse, pick your particular poison, then pick which specimen within the tank you would like to dine on, then enter the restaurant and wait for the result.. Wow!!! I've been in restaurants before where you can pick your lobster from a tank (although I've never done it), but here you could pick your particular sub-species of lobster, then the particular one you want!! There were at least 4 different types of lobster that I saw, all from different parts of the world, all varying in size from large to absolutely huge!!  I've only had lobster once before and that was in Bali with Denis late last year.  I loved it then and he decided I should try it again here and you'll see why shortly.

Bet you've never seen anything like this before!
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Like the typical male he is :-), after checking out the different lobster tanks, Denis picked the biggest mother-of-a-lobster in the joint.  He really was huge!  He was a Rainbow Lobster (not sure where these come from) and was beautifully marked in blues and reds and blacks. Gorgeous. He also ordered an entree from the various selections but I wasn't to see what he'd picked til it arrived on my plate and when it did, I think my jaw just about hit the floor!!  It was an oyster, yes just one oyster each. One oyster only because each was the size of an open hand! Just unbelievable. I didn't know oysters came that big. These are from Canada I believe and I knew seafood often grows quite large in colder water but just check out the pictures...

The tanks..
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So, one oyster mornay for entree and as soon as that was done, out came our friend the lobster.

First course - lobster in special sauce. Beautiful.

Second course - garlic lobster. Delicious.

Third course - chilli lobster.  Yumm.

The restaurant itself.
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Fourth course - lobster and noodles. Simply divine.

Lastly, a desert plate with fresh fruits and ice.

So that 's how it's done.  You select your victim, then he's served up in different ways until he's all consumed.  Just unbelievable. What a meal..

I've included a variety of pictured of the different seafoods there and a few of the ways our lobster was served up.  If any of you ever come up here, perhaps we'll have to go there again, I'm dying to try out some of the crabs..

These are scallops, each about the size of an entree plate!
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I've also included a few pictures of the nightclub we went to afterwards - the DragonFly.  We decided that Erin, Jen, Tiff, Dani, Sam, all of you, would enjoy this place.  The decor was amazing and the music fantastic.

As I said before, the nightlife here is just unbelievable.Driving around in the pollution, the traffic with the dirt and poverty you sometimes see its hard to believe but its there..

Hope you enjoy the pictures..

Robyn & Denis