It was Saturday, 25 May 2013. Saturday means shopping day, and we love shopping…. A LOT. So, to filled our day, we went to Nagoya Hill Shopping Centre. Nagoya Hill is one of the most popular shopping centre at Batam island, and they offer a lot of various things inside them. Well, we went there at afternoon, around 12:00, and went shopping. We eventually forgot the time, and when we checked our watch, it was………2:00 PM! Oh my God, why our stomach was not growling yet? Are we too sucked into our shopping ritual, nobody knows..*finger-crossed*
We then go up to 2nd floor of Nagoya Hill to look for our lunch menu. We stepped our foot directly to our favorite restaurant, Soto Lamongan cak Sam Nagoya Hill. You can see their restaurant from far away, near 21 Cineplex Theater. If you ever find it too difficult to find this restaurant, simply ask someone that you want to go to cinema, and this restaurant will be just in front of the cinema. You will see something like you can see on the picture below.
Food and Beverage Review
We ordered their featured menu, Soto Lamongan. We also ordered a portion of Ayam Penyet (Smashed Fried Chicken) complete with a plate of steamed rice. We have heard a lot of positive mouth-to-mouth review from our friends about their soto, so we were going to prove their review. Luckily we were arrived just after rush hour, the restaurant was not very full, and some of their waiters can catch a break. For beverage, we ordered a glass of Mango Juice and a glass of warm water for personal reason. Our order was prepared and served amazingly fast. So, let’s take a few photos about our order before we ate it, just for you guys. 🙂
As you can see, the fried chicken is cooked perfectly. Its color was beautifully gold. It came with a small portion of fried tempeh (Indonesian call it tempe), and a small portion of fried bean curd. They also put some freshly cut cucumbers, a little bit of fresh cabbages, some lemon basil leaves, and of course, a portion of chili mushed together with tomato and shrimp paste. The chili is very fresh and definitely enhances the flavor of the chicken, tempeh, and bean curd. You can mix it with some drops of sweet soy sauce to nullify its spiciness a little. The chicken was tender. You can easily take a bite on the meat without any excessive energy needed. Their marination on the chicken was absorbed well onto the meat. Overall, we can say that the chicken was delicious and tender. The chili sauce will enhance the flavor to the next level. For a lunch menu, this menu was satisfying.
Now we are going to see the soto. You may see the picture beside. The soup is not very clear, because it was filled with some special grain, we usually call it koya. The flavor was very rich and tasty. We suspect they use a lot of chicken on their bowl of chicken stock. They put a lot of sliced cabbages inside the soto. They also put some cut parsley, half cut of boiled egg, a lot of chicken sliced meat, and soun noodle. We had a little feedback about the soto though, the soup is not hot. It was warm, near to normal temperature. We didn’t know how they got a warm soup since if we see their working place, the stove is working all day. Overall, we were satisfied with the flavor and the richness inside the soup, but a little bit disappointed with the temperature of the soto. Oh, you can also put some drops of soy sauce if you prefer a little bit sweet essence inside your soto. Maybe you can give feedback to them if you feel your soto is too cold, I believe they will change your soto to a new bowl which hopefully will be hotter.
For beverage, as we stated earlier, we ordered a glass of mango juice and a glass of warm water. The juice is very fresh as we can commonly see in Indonesia. They put a lot of mangoes inside the juice, without any essence, and without a lot of sugar, we believe. This juice is a perfect way to close our lunch time at Nagoya Hill Batam. And for the other, well, we ordered a glass of warm water, its just…plain..of course isn’t it?
For these menu we ordered, we were billed of IDR42,900. Detail price list is as follow: Soto Lamongan = IDR11,000, Ayam Penyet = IDR12,000, Steamed Rice = IDR3,000, Mango Juice = IDR10,000. A little hint, if you come at weekday, they always offer a package of Soto Lamongan and Steam Rice for IDR11,000 only. 😉
General Review
The ambience of this restaurant is not very eye-catching. The interior (if you can call it interior….) is quite huge, we personally think they can handle up to 100 people in one lunch time. They have a lot of waiter and waitress, but their service time is quite lacking in some cases. If you happened to arrive at this restaurant on weekday, you will see the difference of their service time compared to their service time at rush hour or weekend. The situation will be better if they recruit more people as their waiter and chef or try to optimize their serving time by doing some training or something else. Overall, their ambience is OK but their service quality is not stable. We can give one point to the attitude of their waiter and waitress. They are friendly and willing to hear your feedback.
Their recommended food is Soto Lamongan and Ayam Penyet. We follow their recommendation and our friends’ recommendation, and we can prove that they are right. Their foods are stunning, the only minus point is that the soto was not hot. If the soto was hot, we could call it perfect. The price is acceptable, worth every penny you spend.
This is their name and location:
Soto Lamongan Cak Sam
Nagoya Hill 2nd Floor, in front of 21 Cineplex
Their google map location (we can only give you a map to reach Nagoya Hill)
Hope you enjoy reading our story, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any question regarding our review. Bye for now, and cheers!
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