Best Restaurants
in Surabaya

Surabaya is Indonesia's second-largest city, and the dining scene has quietly matured over the past decade from hotel restaurants and Javanese rice houses into a genuine alternative to Jakarta. East Java's capital is the country's engine-room port city — a place where Dutch-colonial merchant houses, Chinese-Javanese kitchens, and five-star hotel dining rooms sit on the same streets. Visitors from Jakarta and Singapore who expect a second-tier scene are usually surprised; the city has its own culinary confidence, organised around Javanese classics (rawon, sate klopo, lontong balap) and an international-level fine-dining tier that has matured around the Shangri-La, Bumi, and JW Marriott.

What to prioritise on a three-day visit: one dinner at a colonial-heritage room (De Soematra is the one everyone books); one steakhouse evening (Uppercut under Milo Baldazzi is the serious pick); one hotel dining room for the international menu (Jamoo at Shangri-La covers the bases); one late-night experiential dinner (Incognito is the wildcard that visiting executives from Singapore and KL talk about); and at least one traditional rawon lunch at a local warung — Rawon Setan Embong Malang is the institution that every Surabaya food writer measures others against.

Practical notes: reservations for De Soematra and the Shangri-La restaurants are best made via WhatsApp or OpenTable; Uppercut takes bookings directly through its Instagram DMs; most premium restaurants in Surabaya accept Visa and Mastercard but Amex coverage is patchy outside the big international hotels. Tipping at 10% is standard in tourist-facing restaurants and increasingly expected at local fine-dining venues, though service charge is sometimes already included — always check the bill. The city's dining day runs later than Jakarta: lunch from 12–2pm, dinner from 7pm, with most rooms taking last bookings at 9:30pm on weekdays and 10:30pm on weekends.

Neighbourhoods: the Tunjungan corridor holds the colonial-heritage restaurants and the Hotel Majapahit historic rooms; Embong Malang and the surrounding business district has the steakhouses and international fine-dining; Pakuwon and Gubeng contain the newer chef-driven venues that have opened since 2022; Graha Family and Citraland in the western suburbs have the gated-community fine-dining — quieter, more family-focused, and where many Surabaya business dinners actually take place. Kya-Kya (Kembang Jepun) is the Chinese-Indonesian old quarter, worth a walk between meals for the hawker heritage that still defines the city's palate.