Angke : The Authentic Chinese Restaurant

Angke has been a legend for their authentic Chinese cuisine here. Honestly, I indeed prefer the Chinese restaurants that filled and talked by old people as it indicated that their dishes are worth the wait. Yea, I said "worth the wait" as Angke always packed during lunch and dinner time and have a long list of waiting hungry customers. 

Me, as a youngster also like to join of the old men's excitement for this restaurant. I have been eating at Angke since my childhood (well not frequently) and til now I still claim their rendition of "lindung cah fumak" (stir fried eel with fumak veggies) is the best. Intense flavour of the sauce and seasoning makes you can not stop digging in. The other reason why they serve the best lindung is that the eel is not mushy but still firm and soft inside with a nice bit of crispiness on every bite. 

Our order also came with salad dingin that day (cold salad), a plate of chinese salad, that contain guts on the side with coleslaw (mixed turnips, carrots and jelly fish). This is one of the recommended dish to have as well and the only dish I could snapped during my family dinner. It's really hard to take a picture when you go eating with family, the dishes are gone in no time (ha!).

Besides, it's also a must to try their steamed chicken with garlic, shrimp spring roll and "sapo tahu". They are pricey I admit, but along with the reasonable portion and amazing taste, they are worth to be priced that high. If it's not worth it, there won't be such a long queue right? All is good, the only thing I could say.

Lunch at Pancious Taman Anggrek

What could you expect from Pancious to be awesome other than it's indulging pancakes and pastas? My answer is its all day breakfast. Typical English (western) breakfast, my choice was omelette, oftentimes underestimated. While it sounds simple, but many restaurants (even 5 star hotel) have possibilities to fail. However, I give my salute to Pancious as its rendition is superb. 

Pancious successfully delivers the right consistency and texture of a perfect omelette; fluffy and not overcooked. You still can feel the wobbly eggs flow down to your tummy and you feel like ohm-ing at the same time. The melted cheese, perfect texture and seasoning can spoil your palate. Furthermore, the omelette is complemented with its famous grilled potatoes and salad. I have already favourited its grilled baby potato indeed, but I am glad that I managed to find the new dish to miss.

After this new experience, I believe there are more unexpectedly great nomming to explore at Pancious kitchen menu.

Pancious

Mall Taman Anggrek Lt 3

Jl Tanjung Duren Timur 2

Jakarta

021- 5639130

www.pancious.com

Monday - Sunday

10.00 - 22.00

Dinner at Kitchenette Central Park Mall

After being disappointed of dining in Kitchenette Thamrin branch in my first visit, I came again with my friends to have dinner, but this time it's Central Park branch. This branch has a unique building construction, as the place is combined with Pizza E Birra and surrounded by pool. 

Well, I and my friends totally had a different menu that day and tend to avoid to order the dishes we had in our first visit. Thus, we had chose their mains over galettes and Spanish tapas instead of salad. We ate croquette with chorizo and ratatouille, baked mushroom with cream sauce as appetizer followed by wild salmon, half roast chicken, pesto chicken spaghetti, carbonara pasta and lastly, grilled octopus. As we are fans of tea, we decided to have 5 different flavours of premium tea; Moroccan mint, sencha tea, grand wedding, passion fruit and creme caramel tea.

The Spanish croquette, consisted of three balls of deep fried potato croquette with gooey cheese filling on top of big lettuce with a sprinkle of ratatouille and chorizo accompanied by a small bowl of chili sauce. Yea, it's only a sprinkle which I wished they put more in the dish. The chili sauce was mild and sweet, typical thai chili sauce. The other appetizer, the baked mushroom has a nice creamy sauce, but the taste was rather contradicted. I think it might be due to the thickness of the cream sauce that overpowered the mushroom; unlike the mushroom cream soup that has a well balance flavour with lighter texture. Despite of that, I like the cream sauce standalone.

My main dish, half roast chicken, served with garlic herb butter, salad and baked potato. Unlike any other baked potato that is usually unpeeled, wrapped with aluminium foil and topped with cold butter, Kitchenette rendition was resemblance to lasagna. Thinly sliced potato and stacked with cream spread on each layer and some cheese on top to create a nice golden brown colour. It was good, but unfortunately, it's too small (at least for me). The chicken itself was marinated and well seasoned. Strangely, the dish had a kind of "tongseng" smell; the Indonesian dish with santan soup base that usually has mutton and shredded cabbage and tomato as the main ingredient. I was wondering what herbs that enhanced that good aroma. I couldn't finish it despite of the good taste and let my guy friend took care half of it.

As one of their recommended dish, the grilled octopus was well executed. The octopus was cooked perfectly and got a nice charred flavour. It has a unique texture as I bit the tentacle. It was a new experience for me to eat a big octopus as I have only ever had their babies that Japanese restaurants usually have as an appetizer. The last meaty dish, wild salmon with cream sauce, served with sauteed long beans and roast potato was disappointing. It's tagged as a new dish served there and I think they haven't got ahead of it. It had fishy smell; nothing to brag about.

For pasta dishes, both carbonara and pesto chicken sauce were excellent. However, I slightly scored the pesto higher than carbonara as it had basil smell but in a good way, it was well seasoned and not too creamy. Another reason, many restaurants can serve carbonara pasta at the same yummy level. Thus, the pesto chicken spaghetti indeed deserves to be their signature dishes.

Most of us agreed that the pesto chicken spaghetti was the dish of the day. Other than the dish, we enjoyed our catching up as they have a friendly ambiance and cozy place to hold us for long hours.

Kitchenette
Central Park Mall
Tribeca Park
021- 2920 0260
http://www.ismaya.com/micro/read/kitchenette

Monday - Sunday
10.00 - 22.00

Chinese Feast at Ce Wei Artha Gading

So far, Ce Wei might be one of the best dim sum in Jakarta, yet I believe there are more better yum cha places that I have not visited. But for many discount promos to dine in Ce Wei, you could still get many decent food especially their roasted meat varieties.

The last time I visited Ce Wei Artha Gading, me and friends were getting double meat platter. Our choices were roasted duck and honey char siew. They were quite good, the duck was succulent and char siew was nicely seasoned. However, the pork was too sweet for my liking.

As I always craving for "non-halal" dim sum that pretty hard to find in Jakarta, I ordered dim sum too. But unfortunately, they only serve halal now (or since they open? I did not really pay attention). However, I still like this restaurant better than others I have attempted. I ordered chicken feet, har kau, egg custard bun, xiao long bao, durian pastry, shrimp spring roll which is wrapped with bean curd skin and siew may. All the food were pretty delicious, especially the durian pastry; which is a deep fried skin (homemade I think) with durian filling that unexpectedly be the star dish of the day. And yeah, we ordered another portion after our first one.

I am still looking for the best dim sum places (non-halal of course) that especially have the best egg custard bun like I have ever experienced in Singapore. Until now, I have not found any competitor for it. Egg custard bun is supposed to have custard filling flooding inside the bun like lava and that's the first custard bun I ate in Singapore look like. In contrast, in Jakarta, the custard filling is rather like "kaya" consistency which I think they actually indeed using kaya instead of the real egg yolk.

For all the dishes I had, I got 30% discount for the dim sum and additional 20% for the meat platter as I was offered their member card (using member card got 20% discount on weekends and 50% on weekdays). That was a very good deal I might say.

Ce Wei BBQ Restaurant
Mall Artha Gading Lt 2 Blk A2
Jl. Boulevard Artha Gading Selatan No. 1
North Jakarta
021-45863736
www.cewei.co.id

Monday - Sunday10.00 - 22.00

Marche at Grand Indonesia

This blog has been abandoned for about 2 months and here I am trying to lift up a post again. I have been busy, vacation-ing, to be exact in October and catching up my workload schedule that had been quite left behind. And this is the new post that you and I have been waiting for.

I acknowledged Marche when I was studying in Singapore without realising that it's always been in Indonesia for quite long time already. I heard a lot of opinions about Marche, especially the expensiveness as well as the goodness of Singapore branch. Having heard about that news, at first I did not dare to try, but apparently Indonesian branch doesn't set the price as high as in Singapore.
Thus, I am happy about it.

Marche has a food court concept where they build several counters separately in a big room. Each counter serves different menus as well, and they are cooked in front of you, except for salad counter which is held self service concept.

Caesar Salad, Rosti with egg and bacon, Cheesy Pizza

Speaking about salad, I personally like their grilled vegetables, they were tender and well seasoned. In contrast, Grilled chicken breast was rather ordinary and overpriced.

Apple Crumble and Cheese Cake

For several reasons, I only adore much their desserts and cheesy pizza. Well, I haven't tried all their dishes indeed, but their apple crumble is great. Big portions and fairly priced I reckon. The pizza was so cheesy with thin crust that suit my palate.

The seat arrangement is unique as they set different ambiance in the restaurant. They also provide playground for those bringing their children, so the parents could stay longer and enjoy their leisure time with no worries.

Marche Grand Indonesia Shopping Town West Mall
Entertainment District 3A #03A-D
Jl MH Thamrin 1,
Jakarta
021 - 23581126
www.marche-restaurants.com

Sunday - Thursday 
11.30 - 22.30
Friday - Saturday 
11.30 - 23.30