Fresh Seafood, Preserved Eggs

Our current seafood restaurant in our hometown (Surabaya): Layar Seafood.

They have tanks and ice trays filled with live seafood right as you are walking in. Lobsters, crabs, fishes, clams, frogs. You name it. When you order, you just tell them how big a fish/crab/lobster you want. We've been going there every time I've been home (which is only once a year).

This time, we started with some frog legs :)
The frog legs here are nothing like what I've had in North America. Much more tender and flavorful here! Not like chicken at all. This particular one is made with some nice sweet soy-based sauce.

Then we went to their signature dish, "Kepiting Telur Asin" - which means "Salted Egg Crab"
As the name suggests, the sauce on the crab is made from Salted Duck Eggs (aka. Telur Asin). The salting is a method of preserving the eggs by soaking them in either brine or salted charcoal.
I thought loading the fresh crab with preserved eggs was somewhat ironic - but it is soo delicious so who cares!
A yummy savoriness filled my mouth with each sauce-laden bite of crab.

We also got some boiled crab with garlic broth
Good, and the freshness of the crab definitely stands out here. But flavor wise is a lot more subtle than the salted egg one, so we definitely liked the other one better, especially since we ate it first. This one tasted rather bland after eating the other. Should've started with this first.

I also have trouble finding good watercrest (Kangkung) dish in the US, so I ordered some here:
Sauteed watercrest/kangkung and shrimp in slightly spicy sauce.

A great meal throughout! Their ingredients are fresh and we can't seem to go wrong with any of the offerings here. Hopefully it will stay open next year as I plan to come back again and again. The Crab with "Telur Asin" is their unique dish and it would be such a shame if I can never eat it again!!

Layar Seafood
Jl. Raya Bukit Mas 109 Surabaya
Phone: 031 5683716