Quickbites: Indomi Telor Kornet Keju

I think it's everyone's favorite food. Cheap, comforting, fulfilling.

P.S sorry for all the quickbites! Full posts coming soon.

Quickbites: the best sate padang in jakarta

I CANNOT believe I haven't written about this dish here. I present to you the ultimate sate padang (in Jakarta): Sate Padang Ajo Ramon. Pieces of juicy cow tongue skewered and grilled to perfection, laid atop a bed of ketupat, bathed with a generous helping of hot, thick sauce, finished with a heap of keripik pedas. I mean, it just does NOT get any better than this. I've tried a lot of sate padang, and nothing in Jakarta ever comes close. (In Padang of course it's a different story, I've been told) And the keripik, oh the keripik. It's (probably) cassava with some spicy, oily, delicious concoction that is so crunchy! It's not your usual sticky, sweet-and-spicy keripik that accompanies sub-par sate padang. This keripik is in a league of its own.

TL;DR: you cannot say you have eaten sate padang in Jakarta until you've eaten this one.

Locations: Pasar Santa (evenings), Jl Cikajang (beside Konro Daeng Naba all day), Lapangan Blok S (all day, I guess)

Quickbites: Horfun Kepiting

Another quickbite from Kopitiam QQ, which is quickly becoming a family favorite. The thing with this type of noodles is, it's usually kinda bland and needs an extra help, like soy sauce and chili. This crab horfun doesn't. This is basically wide rice noodles with a thick sauce, crab meat, eggs and some prawns. It's so balanced, yummy, and comforting. For a little added deliciousness, add a bit of green chili sauce that is provided on your table. Perfect for rainy afternoons!

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Quickbites: free food! Torino's Margherita Pizza

Lucky me, my mother knows the owner of a hot Italian restaurant near my house, Torino. She (the owner) sent us two boxes of delicious margherita pizza. It's just pizza with cheese, tomato sauce, and sprinklings of beef bacon, but dangit it doesn't get any better than this. Divine simplicity at its best!

Quickbites: Ragusa's strawberry ice cream

Smooth with the perfect amount of sweetness and tang: forever a classic.

Quickbites: banana pancakes

Perfection on a plate: Nanny's Pavillon's Banana Pancake. It's pancake that has bananas in it, drenched in maple syrup and vanilla ice cream. Nuff said.

Quickbites: Tahu Bolak Balik

This is Kopitiam QQ's Tahu Bolak Balik. It got its cheeky name because each one of them is a piece of tahu cut in half, and glued together back-to-back with something delicious that tastes like otak-otak. Served with a lovely kecap pedas, it's an awesome afternoon snack. Enjoy with a glass of iced milo!

Loobie Lobster

From the people that made Holycow, comes Loobie Lobster! It's located at Jl Gunawarman, really close to my house. I was really curious to try this, so even though I know it's got a killer waiting list, I just went ahead and did it. 

Look at that line! Took us an hour to get a seat. But I'll tell you this: it was worth it.

This is my half lobster. It took its time getting to me, so when it did get on my table, I tore it up, hence the not so pretty picture. Bram's whole lobster came way earlier. I gotta admit, the service isn't that smooth yet, unlike its brother Holycow, since they opened not so long ago. But the food is fantastic. Your lobster will come with white rice and a side of crunchy calamari, with the sauce of your choice. There's two options: sambal matah (YES PLEASE) and spicy garlic. I tried both, and both of them are awesome. I suggest getting both, because the sambal matah go so well with the lobster, and the spicy garlic go well with the calamari. The meal filled me up, with good value. I think the whole lobster costs less that 100k. Silly me, I always forget to note prices of meals.

Anyway, do check them out! Come early, wear comfy clothes and bring something to keep you busy while waiting. Or hit them up at @loobielobster. Enjoy!

Garcon, Plaza Senayan

For someone who goes to Plaza Senayan a lot, Garcon is a welcome addition to PS' array of restaurants. Ever since they put up a really pretty 'Coming Soon' wall.

One day me and my mom decided to go fancy and have lunch there.

I love their decor! I love love love it. 

Came in, sat down, enjoyed the decor, opened the menu, almost had a heart attack. Hahaha I mean, I know it's not gonna be cheap, but dayum! Thankfully I'm with my mom, so I'm good. After I got over the initial heart attack, I got excited because the menu looks delicious. 

After ordering, we got this complimentary bread and butter. The bread. Oh dear God, the bread. It's SO delicious. It's like being in France all over again. It's warm, crunchy on the outside, pure deliciousness inside. With the salted butter, I'm willing to pay for this. Heck, I'll come back to Garcon just for this bread alone!

Starters: Escargot. I think the appetizers are decently priced, this baby is 50k. It's delicious. The breadcrumbs is crunchy, adds good texture to the escargot.

My dish: sauteed shrimp, lemon, and parsley risotto (90k). This dish is a pretty little dish. The portion's a bit small, but I think it's enough. The risotto is thick, and VERY cheesy. It's not necessarily a bad thing, I still find it delicious. The lemon and parsley adds good balance. The shrimps are awesome! Really juicy and sweet, seasoned well. Great dish!

My mom's: roasted chicken and glazed vegetables in rosemary juice (90k). Yes, we ordered the cheapest dishes to test the waters and avoid getting ripped off (*cough* yeyo *cough*). This dish is really good value! We got two pieces of succulent chicken, with veggies and potatoes. Grilled chicken and rosemary go hand in hand, so it's delicious. Very filling, too.

We ordered one other thing that I forgot to take a picture of (oops), the crunchy creamy cheese wrap with garden salad (60k). It's basically four samosa-like creamy cheese wraps with delicious cream cheese fillings and a bunch of greens. It's awesome, I love it. (I love salads) The greens are crunchy and fresh, the dressing is a bit tangy but good, and the wraps made it come full circle. Noms!

Overall, I'm impressed. Hefty price tag, yes. But it's delicious, the place is really pretty, so it's all worth it.

quickbites: my definition of a perfect meal

Now and then, I like to tweet my Cravings from America. The three items in this picture are all my biggest cravings (aside from my continuous craving of hot cheetos). French Onion sunchips dipped in HUMMUS!!!!! (I miss hummus so much) With roast beef sub from subway!!!!!! So much amazingness in one meal.

quickbites: beef noodle soup

Look at that bowl of fresh noodle, hot steamy soup and tasty chunks of beef. It's comfort in a bowl. This is the beef noodle soup from a stall at ion orchard's Food Opera. It's slurp-a-licious!

quickbites: my Singaporean lunch

My culinary goal for my latest SG trip was don't eat anything I've eaten before. So say hi to Monster Curry! This is their chicken karaage curry. They're really good! The chicken is crunchy and scrumptious, the curry sauce smooth and full of flavor. But my "rule" has one exception: chicken wings. The ones sold in food courts such as this plate from FoodRepublic at Somerset 313 is soooooo gooooooddddd.

quickbites: SumoSalad

I have a big big love for good salads. Fresh, crunchy, not overdressed salads. Indonesia needs waaaayyy more salad bars. When I was in SG last christmas, I had this beauty for lunch! Chicken avocado salad and chickpeas salad from SumoSalad at Somerset 313. They're gorgeous.

KopiKitchen

KopiKitchen is a cute place at LippoMall Kemang. It serves a well edited menu, a delicious one! Me and my family ordered their top rated menus, which are nasi rendang, spaghetti aglio olio, eggs benedict, and buttermilk chicken. Yep, it's comfort food at its best.

Simple, clean menu! Prices are around 50k, pretty average.

I didn't take pictures of the nasi rendang, my dad ate it up as soon as it hit the table! Hahaha, what I like about their Asian menu is they only have less than 5 Asian items and don't try to please everyone by doing all kinds of cuisine. This nasi rendang is SO good, comparable to those in Padang restaurants. Served with a good sambel ijo, too. Aside from this, they also have a tom yum and ayam kalio.

This is the aglio olio. This is yummy!!! It's spicy, garlicky, not too oily (which can be the case for lots of aglio olios out there), with delicious pieces of chicken. It's joining the ranks of my favorite pasta dishes.

Eggs benedict! My sister is obsessed with them. This one is really delicious, instead of English muffin, they use a slice of bread (not an expert of breads so I have no idea what's this one called), with a slice of beef, perfectly poached egg and hollandaise sauce. On the side, a fresh citrus-y salad with pickles. The bread was crunchy, the egg was just perfect. It was heavenly.

Hello, best fried chicken ever. It's crunchy outside, super soft inside, the batter was buttery, buttermilk-y (if that makes sense), savory, delicious. The mash was creamy with a great gravy. It was 100% Southern comfort food. Made me miss Texas. It's 55k+, worth every single penny. Amazing!!!

Love, love, love!

Kopitiam Tan: NOMZ

Near my house, there's a cluster of restaurants, that has a Sederhana, a Beautika, a Tekko, a BeerGarden, and this gem, Kopitiam Tan. So one day, Bram's craving kopitiam, and I was eager to try this new place.

First impression: cozy place. It's roomy, with a vintage feel to it.

Lots of big windows, which means lots of sunshine. The trees outside make it even better.

LOVE the little vintage touches, especially this coke bottle as a flower vase.

The menu's design feels in sync with the whole feel. The menu is well edited, which shows that this place only serves what it does best. Price range is not far from the average kopitiams, main courses are aroung 35k, toasts are around 25k, drinks are around 17k.

My companion.

I ordered the kopi susu, he ordered es teh tarik. Both are good! That's the beautiful butter kaya keju toast. More about that in a bit.

Very delicious looking kaya toast. This one has cheese in it. Surprisingly amazing. Crunchy, soft warm butter oozes from the sides, sweet kaya mixing with savory cheese. Yummmmmmm!

Being the pig that I am, I was hungry. even though a few hours earlier I ate steak. Looking at the menu, this jumped out the page. Nasi hainam ayam crispy belacan! Which part of that name doesn't scream delicious? The chicken was crunchy, the belacan was salty and spicy. The rice was awesome too. It was a teeeeny bit on the saltier side, so if you don't like salty food, stay away. Me, I love salty food, so naturally I love this.

Overall, I am in love. Great value for the food, delicious, very nice place. Will definitely come back, again and again.

yeyo: nice place, meh food

hi everyone!
it's been SO long since I wrote a post, and now that school's winding down, I'll try my best to dedicate more time to write, I miss it a lot.

The streets where I live is paved with new restaurants, bistros, cafes, etc etc. Senopati Raya especially. This place, yeyo, has been catching my eyes because it looks nice from the outside, with big neon lights   that says yeyo. So one day, me and my sister went to have lunch. We were staaaarving.

We ordered seafood tapas, mushroom soup, duck confit, grilled salmon, and shrimp tacos. I forgot to take pics of the tapas, soup and the duck, so sorry!

The tapas look nice. On a plate, we got a piece of prawn, a slice of grilled fish, three scallops, some pieces of green olive and oranges. The scallops were beautiful. Sweet with a nice texture. The prawns tasted good too. The fish was so so. Overall, it's a nice start.

Next, the mushroom soup. It was a little watery but tastes good! I really liked it. Too bad I don't have a pic to put up.

This is the grilled salmon. It was a tiny tiny bit overcooked, but it's quite nice. The seasoning didn't please me at all. The salmon itself needed more salt and pepper, and the sauce tasted nice at first, but after a while it just didn't work with the fish. It's some kind of a citrus-y sauce, that got really weird after like ten forkfuls of the dish. This dish costed about 70k, I'm so not impressed.

The duck confit is pretty good, but nothing mindblowing.

Last, but is actually least, the shrimp taco. Just look at it, does it deserve to be called a taco? Not really. It's more like a burrito wannabe. It came with sour cream, guac, and salsa. And fries. What? Ironically, the fries are the best thing about this dish. I kinda liked the sour cream and salsa. The guac, just meh. The taco, well where do I start. The tortilla was huge, cold, flimsy. Inside, there's lettuce and shrimp. Shrimp's pretty good. The lettuce is weird, it's just kinda there. It felt really redundant, no dressing, no nothing. I just ended up eating the shrimp and the fries dipped in the sour cream.

So, for this price range (average 70k ish) yeyo is a huge MEH. I always forget to write down the prices of the dishes! So sorry. The place is pretty nice, strong hang out atmosphere. For drinks, I ordered a strawberry smoothie and my sister had water. For all that we ordered, we paid around 480k. I feel ripped off. Hahaha, well, lesson learned.