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Bali Trip - Halal Dimsum at Renon Restaurant and Kuta Beach

Good news and bad news for this post. To get it out of the way, let's start with the bad news first. The bad news is, in the process of saving the pictures for the post, I ended up deleting them instead (whaattt? idiot right....?). But, the good news is, I was able to retrieve some to at least make this a decent post.
How did I manage to delete the pictures? I have no idea myself, I think I was still half asleep when I pushed the button*raawwrrr. It was 23 seconds until I realized what was going on, but by then, everything was too late T-T. Oh well, such is life. We move on, right?

So anyways, learning from our adventure at Padang Padang Beach, we decided to purposely visit one of the more famous beach in Bali, the Kuta beach. If you've ever been to Bali, most likely either you have heard of it or visited this beach yourself. But before that, I want to share with you this affordable halal dim sum eating place that we visited in Denpasar.

Living in Singapore, it's difficult to find a good halal dim sum restaurant, and we love dim sum. For me personally, I like the idea of eating small portions of a large variety of foods. But of course, I always end up ordering the one that I like repeatedly and over eat, instead of trying something new.

Not that halal dim sum restaurants are non existent in Singapore, but the good ones are located so far from where we live, it's not practical to go there just to dim sum. The ones that are nearby, well....they don't taste very good. Just my luck.

Fortunately, in Bali there's this place called 'Restoran Renon' that serves halal Chinese food including dim sum, yumm.....! We were so excited to go visit the place, especially after we read the wonderful reviews on the internet, I felt this will be the highlight of our trip!

We went there hungry for a dim sum lunch :). So, I ordered some of the classics; chicken feet, cheong fun, har gaw, etc.


This one is fried bean curd skin. The filling is similar to that of siew may or fish cake (sort of), but this one also has shrimp in it, it is crunchy, and slightly salty, it is good, but it was not my favorite that day. There was more bean curd skin than there were fillings :D.


This one is crab and asparagus soup. We did not expect the portion to be that big, which could feed 4-5 people. We managed to finish almost all of it though. I could still taste the soup in my burp for the next 4 days.


This is cheong fan with prawn fillings. Oh wow, I loved it. I love the texture, the fillings, the sauce, it was all perfect. What I love most about eating cheong fan is the soft chewy texture of the skin. But combined with that sauce that was on point, it brought everything to another level, very nice. And they put a lot of shrimp inside too *love. It was a winner.


Clockwise, these are chicken feet-which is my all time favorite dim sum item-har gaw and siew may. The best tasting there is the chicken feet (thank goodness). It did not disappoint, it hit a spot. I was in chicken feet heaven (it may not sound very appealing to most people, but it does to me haha). The sauce was light but the flavor packed a punch, and most importantly, they were tender.

I was a bit disappointed with the har gaw though, it could have been better. Somehow it tasted kind of bland, but fishy (yikes) and the skin is not as thin as I would like it to be. Halal har gaw can be good too, but I guess they haven't figured it out yet, but I have faith in them :D.

The siew may was alright, not fantastic, but was delicious enough. Slightly dry but the taste was okay, nothing is off balance, they were yummy siew may, but they didn't blow my mind away.

Each of these dim sum item were priced at less than SGD 2/portion. Pretty awesome I'd say. This place is pretty popular and well known for the fantastic food and affordable prices.


If there's any chance to eat fried kway teow, I wouldn't miss it for the world. Okay, so the appearance may look slightly crappy, but the taste was quite good. I have to admit, I had better kway teow, but this one can be considered as delicious enough. What I love about it is, they put a bunch of seafood in there, they were not stingy at all. The sauce and spices were kind of standard, overall, a nice tasting kway teow. But they need to mix it a bit more I believe, so some parts will not be saltier than others.


We also ordered fried squid (calamari), but I think it did not come out as great as I would like it to be, which was a shame, but they tasted better than the ones we had at Nyoman Cafe. Naylla and Jourdan seemed to enjoy them very much. But, if they can make it more tender and crispy, it would improve the overall taste tremendously.

Naylla ordered fried rice, but I did not picture it here as I was too busy eating what I ordered for myself :P (I forgot). The total cost for the lunch we had that day was around SGD 30.

In the end, my impression of Restoran Renon is that this place has fantastic cooks, so I expect their business to remain strong for a long time and definitely they will draw in more and more crowds.

After we were done with lunch, we decided to go to Kuta. Jourdan wanted to compare how Kuta par with Padang Padang beach in terms of cleanliness. Needless to say, Padang Padang beach is the winner by far.

But, we had a pretty enjoyable day at Kuta beach, even though the place is way too commercialize in my opinion, do you think so too? I feel like the locals are too pushy in offering their business/services. I only sat down for less than 2 minutes, and I felt like I was swarmed by these aunties who were offering foot massage, back massage, hair braiding services, manicure, pedicure, etc. And they don't take 'no' for an answer lightly you know. I mean, they will just continue on and on, pestering you until you cave in. In the end, I got Naylla a manicure and myself a back massage. It was kind of enjoyable the massage, but I'm not too big on massages, and the auntie was pretty strong with her hands. My back hurt for several days after that :D. It's not that I could not lie down, but it just felt tender.


Kuta beach still offers an amazing view, so it was a good thing that we went there to visit.

Also, Kuta beach is very near Kuta Beachwalk which is a mall complex that offers numerous options in terms of food, entertainment and major brand shops. So once you're done playing at the beach, you can head to Kuta Beachwalk to relax in one of the cafes. It takes only 5 minutes on foot to get there.


So at the beach, we had a relatively wonderful time. We played a little sand, lie down on the beach chairs (these are rented though, at SGD 5/hour T-T), enjoy some of our favorite beverages. I felt like a little adventure so I went with coke. But you can also enjoy young coconut drinks here if you prefer. Too bad it was kind of cloudy so the sunset was not as beautiful as it should be, but it was a nice beach time nevertheless.

Here's the video I made for our trip this time, I hope you like it.



More information about Kuta beach:

Kuta
Badung Regency, Bali
Indonesia

More information about Restoran Renon:

Jalan Cok Agung Tresna no. 85
Denpasar Timur, Bali
Indonesia

Tel: +62 361 261364

Operation hours: 10.00 am - 2.30 pm, 5.30 pm - 10.00 pm


Comments

  1. The cheong fan with prawn fillings looks superb and tasty. Great highlights in this well-written article =)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alhamdulilah. Thank you for taking the time to read it, and thank you for the kind words :)

      Delete

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