PIK SEAFOOD, ELANG LAUT - PANTAI INDAH KAPUK

I AM PISSED!

Those times when I visited a certain restaurant, taste their food and felt like certain restaurants deserve more traffic, and that’s the case with this particular restaurant that I am reviewing: PIK Seafood at Elang Laut Pantai Indah Kapuk.

Seriously, this is one of the most underrated restaurants in Jakarta! Must admit I was just a little skeptical when I first entered the restaurant as it was empty and me and my brother were the only two guests. We wanted to fulfil our major craving for good crabs so here we were having our own crab party. I’ve personally heard a friend of mine praising the crabs here so I guess it should worth a damn try.

Getting here was rather easy, it’s actually located just across the street of the cute Itadakimasu, just notice a big “PIK Seafood” signage and logo (picture below) and you’re on the right spot. The interior and ambiance of the restaurant was very simple and yet pretty proper for a crab specialist restaurant. The only downside about the restaurant was the horribly designed menu, they should really changed the entire book menu as the fact is, the food looked waaaay better in real presentation than in pictures.

We had some of their best sellers, but first, no shock needed for the amount of food that you’ll be looking, if you haven’t seen me eaten before, nice to meet you.

If you love extra kick of spice to your food, then you just can’t skip their chili!!! They’re super hot but super good as well! Generally I love all of their chili, but my personal favorite would be their Sambal Cetar (sambal polos pedas). There are 4 chili options available here: Sambal Cetar, Sambal Pencit (mango chili), Sambal Terasi (chili with ebi paste), Sambal Si Doel (chili with shallot).

Tahu Goreng Cabe Garam – IDR 22,8k

ADDICTING! Soft and silky battered tofu, deep fried and dressed in salt & chili dressing.

Udang Goreng Bawang
The prawns were chunky and fresh, it’s a pretty simple dish with beautiful execution, the garlic dressing really enchance the flavor and the quality of this dish, plus it made the dish semed very fragrant!

Kerang Ijo Saus Tauco
Don’t you hate it when you have clams but most of the times the clams were anything but pile of bullshits: just shells with no or very little meat! Here in PIK Seafood they actually serve big and chunky clams and cooked ‘em with a very tasty tauco sauce!

Pocai Telur Tiga Rasa (Pocai with Three Eggs) – IDR 40k
To be completely honest, this was THE BEST pocai dish I’ve ever had in my life, it’s so good I don’t even know how to emphasize how much I love this in words, this was SUPER GOOD in every way possible! The portion was quite generous for sharing, the veges was perfectly cooked without interrupting the firmness of it, and the seasoning was beautiful, I just love how the soup had this savory flavor and salted-egg flavor to it, yes the salted egg really enhance the overall flavor. You can either have it fresh from the bowl or have it with rice, just as good, but when it comes to me, with rice of course! HAHA

For the fish courses here, you can customize the fish selection depending on your liking and standard, they offer various options from bandeng, gurame, papakulu/ayam-ayam, baronang, kuwe, ekor kuning, kakap merah, bawal putih, bawal hitam, kerapu. I was fond by how they have written the cooking method recommendations for each fish on the menu, I had the “Ikan Bakar Sambal Matah” so the perfect fish for this dish was the Ikan Ekor Kuning (yellowtail fish).

Cumi Goreng Tepung with Cabe Garam – IDR 48k
Crunchy battered squids with tasty cabe garam (salt and chili) seasoning!

Ikan Bakar Sambal Matah – IDR 98k
I probably BLOODY LOVE SAMBAL MATAH more than any chili in this entire universe, and you know when you love something so dearly, when it fails to reach your standard, you’ll be plain pissed, just pissed.

Luckily, PIK Seafood didn’t have any plan to outshame themselve on my palate as their sambal matah was beautiful! It had a good level of spicines (even though I expected it to be a little spicier, but all good), and the yellowtail fish was indeed the perfect type of fish for the dish! Smooth and lean fish meat and loaded.

Just like the fish dishes, to have their crab dishes, you can customize the type of crab you want, here they offer crab selections such as: kepiting Makassar/East Borneo (550 -950 grams, starting from IDR 48k/ons), kepiting Papua/Timika (550 -950 grams, starting from IDR 58k/ons), kepiting super jumbo – 1 KG, kepiting telur, kepiting soka and kepiting ranjungan with seasonal prices!

Once you’ve picked the desired crab of yours, you can choose how you want your crabs to be cooked! They offer cooking methods such as: tim telur, tim bawang putih, Singapore chili crab sauce, bakar manis, asap, saus padang, saus asam manis (sweet and sour), saus kari (curry sauce), lada hitam (blackpepper), or saus telur asin (for additional IDR 25k).

Let me just put it this way: THEIR CRABS WERE FREAKING AMAZING!!! Generally everything that I had was either good or damn satisfying. The crabs were not one of those skinny bitches with nothing, they’re freaking chunky and loaded! The curry sauce (Indian curry sauce) was very rich, fragrant and had this beautiful balance of salty-spicy and savory!

Kepiting Saus Kari (Crab With Curry Sauce)

Kepiting Saus Telur Asin (Crab with Salted Egg Yolk Sauce)

My personal favorite has got to be their awesome salted egg crab! This is PUUUURFECT and lost for words to describe this, but here you’re looking at chunky crab dressed in very beautiful salted egg sauce. I literally can have this all for myself!

Kepiting Saus Lada Hitam (Crab with Blackpepper Sauce)
The Blackpepper was my brother’s favorite, or generally, most people’s favorite! This good old classic was executed beautifully by them wih the beautiful sweet and spicy flavor, again, a perfect tag team with the rice! OMG seriously rice and crabs are always DA BEST!

Festive presentation came from their special baked crab where they actually serve the crab wrapped in an alumunium coating, on a pan and on fire! Master of seasoning – the sweet-savory herb seasoning was so rich it literally coated the crab with a layer of goodness. The sweet seasoning had this shredded coconut like texture.

If you’re reading this post right now, please please pay a visit to this restaurant, they seriously deserve more love than they’re currently having.

And just like that, my late lunch got me feeling confident enough to claim that PIK Seafood is one of eatandtreats’ best findings of 2015! A restaurant really worth visiting and digging in! GOOD LUCK PIK Seafood, I really do hope you stay long in the biz!

I kinda wanna be mean but I just can't be that mean, but I think we all know what's going on in the biz here. Most of the new places (but I am not referring to every single one and I am not naming names) do have pretty place and nice ambiance, but when it comes to food, it's just.. yeah right, not so much impressive, and sometimes I feel bad towards those hidden gems that doesn't get that much of exposure and little do people know that they actually serve AMAZING food, but the thing is, everyone's struggling so I think it's not fair for me to judge. I do hope this boost 'em a bit.

Thank you for reading!

PIK Seafood

Ruko Elang Laut, Blok C No. 40-41

Jl. Pantai Indah Selatan 1 No. 7

Pantai Indah Kapuk, Jakarta Utara 14470

Opening Hours: 11 AM - 10 PM

Average spending for two: IDR 300k

Dresscode: casual

WiFi: yes!

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Map for PIK Seafood