This week has been incredibly productive for this series. On Saturday, the Mrs and I went to Berkeley and had lunch at Jayakarta.
The place was packed and we waited outside in the drizzle for 20 minutes. A very tall Dutch woman and her two American friends came out of the restaurant after a great meal and asked us to take a picture of them for posterity.
We started with the Mie Tek-Tek-- stir fried egg noodles with chicken, vegetables, and a fried egg on top. We also got the fish cake appetizer (Otak-Otak Panggang) with peanut dipping sauce. They're wrapped in banana leaves. The menu notes that this is the Jakarta version, which is supposedly different than those found in Malaysia and Singapore. I'm usually a fan of fishcakes but these had a pencil eraser consistency and were on the bland side.
This Nasi Rames rice plate was our favorite. It has rice, fried eggs, teri kacanag (fried anchovies with peanuts), fried chicken, and spicy coconut beef. Other than the tough-as-plastic beef, everything else on the plate was perfection. This is the Mrs ordering me to take a picture of it.
We also ordered the Sambal Goreng Udang Pete, a spicy shrimp dish with stink beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and chili sauce. I got it medium spicy, which was as much as I could handle. When I went up to pay for the meal, I noticed a sign warning about allergies to eggs, shellfish, peanuts, etc. It seemed like every dish at the restaurant had one or more of these ingredients.
Countries tried so far:
Africa: Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa
Asia: Afghanistan, Burma, China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam
Europe: Bosnia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Sweden
North America: El Savador, Mexico, USA
South America: Brazil, Chile, Venezuela
Tried Indonesian cuisine for the first time recently in India. Dish called Nasi Goreng. It was a plate with little bit of everything - rice, 2 types of meat, some vegetables. Each bit tasted good on it's own but they did not mix well into one. Also it had little pieces of cucumber that looked fresh. So I decided to leave them for last cause I wanted fresh taste after meat and spices. Turned out they were pickled and extremely salty leaving horrible taste that made me cringe.
ReplyDeleteIndonesian fried rice in India? Couldn't imagine how it would taste. You were right that the cucumber should tasted fresh instead salty.
ReplyDeleteThere are too much "Indonesian Cuisines" to even start with. I don't bother any of them. As long as it has rice, I'm safe.