Cuisine of Bintan Island for gourmets. Places for dinner - best restaurants

There are a lot of good restaurants with Indonesian cuisine in Bintan. If you are not a fan of Asian cuisine, you can find places with a European menu. It should be mentioned that unlike most Asian countries, they don’t use a lot of spices in Indonesia. Cardamom, nutmeg, ginger root, turmeric, coriander you will find in different quantity in every local dish. If the food is too spicy, it is common to drink water with ice, tea or coconut milk with it. Remember that cutlery here does not include a knife, and the Indonesians think that some courses you should eat with your hands.

Besides warung, a small restaurant, you can also buy food in small shops on the street. The main courses you will see on display at the window and they will serve it with rice as a garnish. You should better go to the places, where there are customers, otherwise, there may be expired products. Pies, roasted vegetables in a blanket or sate kebabs you can always buy on the street. If you want, you can go to the culinary courses. During the special program, designed for the travelers, you will learn the peculiarities of the local cuisine and learn how to cook basic courses.

The most popular dish on the island are probably nasi goreng and mi goreng, fried rice, and fried noodles. These are served as a side dish to the poultry, meat, fish or mix it with vegetables. What is interesting, in many cafes nasi goreng and mi goreng are served with eggs and shrimp chips called krupuk. There are several variants of mi goring, differs by the type of noodles: in kwetiau goreng they use flat noodles, in bihun goreng – thin glass noodles. Sate kebabs from chicken, pork or lamb are probably the second most popular dish in Indonesia. You can buy it almost everywhere. Sate from shrimps, octopuses, and fish is also popular in Bintan. Copyright www.orangesmile.com

If you want to try everything at once, order nasi campur. The thing is, this is rice with the mix of several different additives, and sometimes it can be six of them. Those, who like spicy food, should try rending, beef, steamed in coconut milk with a lot of spices. In Bintan, they prepare a very tasty dish called otak-otak. It is a casserole with ceviche, covered in banana leaves. At least once try soup from shark’s fins. There are also vegetarian courses: Gado-Gado with spicy peanut sauce, soy pastry tempeh, mixed vegetable cap cai. If you want, you can also try exotic stuff like swallow-nest in bullion or fried locust.

For a dessert order rujak, made with fruit and palm sugar sauce, fruit pudding, sweet pastries or natural ice cream. Rice pudding with durian cream has a great taste. If you order juice, choose something local and exotic like juice from mango, sugar cane or pink guava. You can order café latte with avocado, just remember they add sugar in it by default. Ginger tea, crush drink with beans and sweet syrup, and nectar from Indonesian tangerine also taste good. Coconut milk is also popular among the travelers and the locals. Alcohol is not very common on the island because of Muslim restrictions but you should try palm vodka Arrack anyway. You should also try Brem, rice wine, which will remind you port wine or tuak beer, made from palm inflorescence.