Indonesia - Cantonese lunch in Surabaya

[klyeoh]

Not really the best Chinese-Cantonese meal I'd had - but considering that one is actually in Surabaya, Indonesia's 2nd city, it can actually be considered pretty "decent". I enjoyed it, a welcome respite from all the "soto ayam", "nasi rawon", etc.

Lunch today at Duck King Restaurant in Tunjungan Plaza (Surabaya's premier retail & entertainment mall):
- "Kombinasi Telur Pitan Mayonis" - century eggs with pickled ginger & fruit salad in mayonnaise. I loved century eggs, and this was a refreshing starter.
- "Sup Hisit Telur Kepiting" (Sharksfin Soup with Crab-meat & Crab-roe). Served in a pretty heat-proof paper-"bowl" set on a mini-burner. The soup was tinged a deep orange from the crab-roe. Generous cuts of sharksfin (it's not whole comb but, hey, for only IDR208,000 or USD22 - what did I expect?). Generous helpings of crab-meat. Soup lacked the body and sublte flavors one finds in good sharksfin soup in HK or Singapore, but I lapped it all up anyway ;-)
- Braised Golden Abalone with broccoli. This was delicious, the thick, unctuous brown sauce was intense.
- "Tumis Asparagus dgn Bawang Putih" - sauteed asparagus spears with garlic. Simple but quite well-executed - love the strong garlic flavors.

Didn't quite take to the young coconut juice drink here though - pink rose syrup and basil seeds were added. Would have preferred a tall glass of simple iced coconut juice.

Address details
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The Duck King
Plaza Tunjungan III
Lower Ground Unit 32-41
Surabaya, East Java
Tel: [phone]

[huiray]

Interesting! Is orange shark's fin soup served in other places?
Rose syrup seems to be ubiquitous in Java!
Can one order in Bahasa Indonesia (Suroboyoan?) or in Chinese or in English?

[klyeoh]

No, it's only this restaurant's version of sharksfin soup - I suspect they made liberal use of food coloring, which is the general practice in many other restaurants here.

[M_Gomez]

My dear, you need to detox after all that colour/dye food in Indonesia. I don't think they have an AVA like in Singapore where food safety is monitored.
By the way, after all that "bingeing", you seemed to have lost weight (as I see from those photos on your FB)

[klyeoh]

I think layer cakes from Sarawak, Malaysia, still "take the cake" literally when it comes to overuse of food dyes:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/777817