Jakarta Indonesian Restaurant

True fact, VGirl and I love Malaysian/Indonesian food, its often halal, has a huge emphasis on vegetarian cuisine, massive portions of food, cheap prices, its a wonderful combination of Asian cuisines that we love and also mi goreng is gods gift to noodle lovers. So its a bit of a mystery why we haven't been to Jakarta in New Farm on an earlier occasion.

This place!

We got there so early that they were still opening up the restaurant when we arrived. It got pretty busy as we were leaving, lots of ex-pats and their Indonesian wives from the sound of it! It's pretty easy to spot from Brunswick Street, its pretty close to the Night Owl so its relatively easy to find!

This spot!

It has a really traditional Balinese kinda feel? It reminds me of the Indonesian lote class I had in primary school or at least the way that my teacher decorated the room!

I like it!

Lots and lots of tables

Here is their menu!

I got the ayam goreng tepung as my snack, because an entire dish of fried chicken is a snack of course. This was a described as marinated and deep fried chicken pieces. They look lightly battered to me and were quite salty, I found the proportion to be a bit stingy/lacking for the price of a main dish. I think this would be perfect for a group to sharing but as a complimentary dish, that's all you get!

Hmmmm~

VGirl got vegetarian bakmi goreng, she remarked that this was quite a healthy rendition with lots and lots of vegetables, onions, kai lan, tomato and carrot. We both found that this dish wasn't as flavoursome as the one that we at Sambal Oelek but it had a much greater charry flavour. She also wanted more visible bits of egg and so stole my fried egg from my plate with my blessing.

Not bad though!

I got the nasi goreng istimewa, Indonesian style fried rice topped with a fried egg, two chicken satay skewers and prawn crackers. It was a moderately sized meal but it gave me a good sample of two of the staples you find in any Indonesian restaurant, nasi goreng and chicken satay! I found the fried rice to be pretty good but the chicken satay was much better. It had a lovely sauce that I wish I had a lot more of!

Jakarta:
Atmosphere: 8, a cute little slice of Indonesia! I really liked the layout and warm setting of the restaurant.
Service: 8, super friendly and insightful service, The young waitress was probably about the same age of us but was very professional.
Food: 7, solid food for a cheap price. This would be great for a get together with friends, where you sit around, share food and chat for ages, not to mention its BYO so a cheap way to get wasted.

Holloway presents Pizzartist!

I got invited to Holloway's new pizzeria opening, Pizzartist! They're originally a glasses and watch design shop but decided to branch into a restaurant. You can still buy glasses and watches at their shop and they still have a downstairs area entirely dedicated to glasses and watch design. This is their website.

This pretty little place

But its not called pizza time ):

Find this piano! Its not tuned ):

I liked the interior, the floor was handmade from different cuts of timber, there is a really interesting mural that I forgot to take a photo of that had tiny animals hidden in it, the lights are made from glasses and there are lots and lots of things to have a look at. There are also two small nooks with curtains to pull across and distance yourself from other diners. I thought that was a great little romantic spot but maybe thats just me!

Pretty pretty

The one on the right

Working piano!

More pianos also glasses you can buy

I love this

Apparently this isn't hard to clean

Yesss guitar shelves!

The guy I was talking to said that they have a constantly changing menu based on whatever is available seasonally. They said that they sourced a lot of herbs and vegetables from their garden at the back which is fully opening in several months where they also intend to hold late night cinema showings. Whatever else they use is sourced from close local sources with the furthest location being Samford Village.

Here is a blurry menu

They have these excellent Balinese knives and forks for their entrees.

Yassss

This is parmigana di melanzane! Soft, smokey layers of eggplant layered with rich, perfectly balanced tomato sauce, not too sour, not too bright and lots of parmesan. Oh and I bought T.. along with me, when you go to an Italian place, bring an Italian girl! Hooray! She said that this was quite good and that it would have been perfect with some bread to scoop up the sauce with it. Some deliciously crusty bread and butter or bread and olive oil would've made my day.

Gorgeous

They gave us a second set of knife and fork for our mains but we didn't use them because pizza is a hands on food. Only weirdoes like VGirl use their knife and fork with pizza.

Shiny

This was T.,'s choice of the Romanisca with a tomato sauce base, salami, mushroom, mozzarella, parmesan, chill honey and basil. Flavour wise, this stood out as both our favourite with it's hint of sweetness from the honey, noticeable heat from the chili flakes and salty salami pieces. The base was a little under done by my standards, but I love toast so crunchy that its nearly burnt. They have a regular oven but they used charcoal to give it a smokey flavour, they said that they were busy building a wood fired pizza oven outside though.

I love that charred base

This is the Marzia with a white base, pancetta, gorgonzola, mozzarella, parmesan and fresh rocket. T., and I both agreed that this had the better base, just more crunchy and slightly thinner. This was crazy cheesy, I've never had anything better than it, so deliciously cheesy, I was in heaven. The rocket balanced it out a bit and gave it a nice freshness to balance out the cheese. The pancetta became deliciously crunchy in the oven but I would've loved more of it!

Soooo good!

Yessssss

We also got the Amore pizza with caramelised figs, zabione custard and sultanas. I know it said sugar almonds but we definitely got sultanas instead. The figs were so good and I normally can't stand those weird seed filled weirdos. The zabione custard was my favourite component and it was chock full of vanilla bean, I don't like sweets but I really enjoyed it.

Pizzartist
Atmosphere: 10, I really, really enjoyed the atmosphere of this place. I recommended it to Ms M for Megababe for her romantic internet date. I love the small size of the shop, so it remains intimate and close. I want to sit in a little closed off alcove with curtains and candle light! Also pizza hahaha.
Service: Great. I got invited there so its biased.
Food: 9, absolutely delicious pizza. I wish there was more toppings but that may be because I love American style pizzas, also the crust was slightly underdone on the white pizza.

2B Thai

VGirl and I had gone for a massive 5 hour shopping trip one weekend and so we decided to go out to dinner to celebrate surviving the trip. I paid for dinner since I had left my wallet behind in my car's glove compartment at VGirl's new house.

I agonised for ages over where we should go, VGirl being a pesky vegetarian and picky to boot. We ended up deciding to go for Thai food somewhere and I decided on 2B Thai because they had a cute name~!

The shop is really easy to find, just off Merthyr street in New Farm and right beside the Westpac branch.

This place!

It's not a particularly big restaurant, quite narrow with lots of footpath seating but it had a great relaxed dinner vibe. I can picture lots of family having their weekend treat eating out at this place on a lazy summer with cicadas chirping away and a cool breeze on the night air.

Your local Thai place?

Its only little!

Here is their menu!

VGirl got a blood orange Tiro drink and I got the Thai lychee iced tea. It was exactly like the name suggested, a strong black tea that was ridiculously sweet with a strong flavour of lychee, swimming in ice cubes and with some lychees on top. I love my drinks sweet, but this is tropical sweet, where you leisurely sweat away and allow the ice to dilute down the drink. I wasn't messing around so I went ahead and poured water in it to speed up the process.

So sweet

I convinced VGirl to get the vegetarian fried rice with me to share because I had read a review saying the fried rice was fantastic here. It's not a lie, I think we ate more than 3/4 of the plate before our mains had arrived. The vegetarian rice was full of tomato, broccoli, cucumber and kai lan pieces, the rice was fluffy and well separated, while it was also all coated in this deliciously savoury soy based sauce with a charry flavour. We polished off the plate, had a huddle, checked our wallets and decided to get a SECOND plate, which we finished almost as quickly.

Seasoned with what, liquid crack?

This was my main of the 2B chicken, pieces of crunchy chicken pieces tossed in a sweet and salty tamarind sauce, with minimal vegetables on the side. Okay, a minute amount of carrots, capsicum, onion and gai lan but I ate that up in like a second. The chicken pieces used are wonderfully moist and about 5cm long, they're very juicy and have a gloriously crunchy exterior. They're soaked in this intensely pungent tamarind, garlic and possibly fish sauce syrup that is really strong, but perfect with rice.

Sooo good

VGirl got the vegetarian red curry which was packed with lots of veggies, carrot, green beans, red capsicum, broccoli, bamboo sprouts and Thai holy basil. She loved the fragrance of it and said while she wasn't too sure what the difference between this and green curry, she liked it! 

2B Thai Restaurant
Atmosphere: 8, seems like a relaxed local location. I liked the relaxed nature of the place and how everyone just seemed to wander in.
Service: 7, quite good service. The waitress was easy to grab the attention of and very attentive of everyone's needs.
Food: 8, really good Thai food! I would happily go here again, the portions are decently sized, well priced and lots of bang for your buck in terms of ingredients present.

Sendok Garpu at Indooroopilly

A* and I were randomly perusing menus on Urbanspoon one day when we saw the menu listing for Sendok Garpu. It had an absolutely fantastic menu and we were both enthralled, especially when presented with their interesting history on their gorgeously designed website. Basically they started as a little hawker style food stall in Coopers Plains, operating only on the weekends for a few hours a day and got so huge they decided to get a restaurant! We were working the weekend so we decided to go later on our days off and then I ditched A* to go there with Jubi cause I haven't seen her in two months.

I've stopped inviting people personally and just put up open invites on Facebook to get people to come with me to places. There was a time where I found out people were complaining that I wasn't inviting them at work so I just decided that if you're really that interested, comment and come along. It's been having mixed results as people I wouldn't normally invite are coming along but people I normally ask to come along aren't replying. Hmm unsure what to do, I think I'll just go back to the old method as it gets more people to come along, ruffled feathers aside.

This place!

This is their main entrance! 

They have very oddly specific opening hours I think, Wedesday-Sunday from 11.30-9pm. I would definitely recommend a booking because when we rocked up, the waiters and waitresses had a brief moment of panic because EVERY SINGLE INSIDE TABLE HAD A RESERVED SIGN ON IT. The restaurant opened on the 25th of June, and we visited on the 2nd of July, not bad for its first week of trading! The only table they could offer us was a very dark corner under some umbrellas that we lamented was the result of us being banished from the warm interior. It was super cold there, and we were right up against the glass, so we felt like orphans staring in at all the other warm and privileged other patrons. 

Hmmmm~

The interior is lovely that being said, lots of things to cast your eye on as your peruse the menu or wait for people to arrive.

I wish I was sitting inside.

Here is their extensive menu. I don't know how long Jubi and I sat there for twenty minutes or more trying to desperately decide what we wanted to eat. My issue was, of course, massive indecision because I really love Indonesian food and am a sinful glutton while Jubi doesn't eat a whole lot of South-East Asian food and didn't know what would be good to order. 

Jubi nearly got the es kopi but backed out once she found out it had sweetened condensed milk added to it, that would've been the main draw for me, she got a Coke Zero. I was more adventurous and got the es cincau hitam, black grass jelly in a pandan sugar syrup. Jubi was weirded out by the taste but she ended up drinking a bit more of it when she ran out of Coke Zero to quench the chilli burn. I'm more used to the grass jelly and herbal tea combination to be honest and was surprised by the strong flavour of pandan in the sugar syrup. I found it to be much too sweet for my liking even with the ice very, very slowly melting in the freezing cold we were sitting in. I would advise against ordering it or at least diluting it with water to lessen the sweetness.

Too much pandan

We got the mini murtabak telur, crispy and super flaky pastry encasing beef mince, boiled egg, scallion and green onion filling. The filling was pleasant, flavoursome and super hot. The pastry on the outside was a little oily though, it left a little film of oil on your fingers and Jubi was turned off the pastries as a result. Of course, that only made me want to eat them even more. The pickles were delicious, super crunchy, sour and sweet, there were a jumble of cucumber and carrot pieces but predominately cucumber. I also got two bright green chillis that I ignored. 

Dem pickles

We both agreed that we needed a side of vegetables of some sort, to balance out the meatiness of our mains so I made the executive decision of ordering a side of kangkung stir fried in belacan paste and chilli, I don't know why its spelled in the menu as blacan twice. I have no idea if the spelling is just different in Indonesian and Google has no idea with me. I'll wait for Yannikins to never get back to me about it. I really love the salty funkiness of belacan, the heat of the chilli and the refreshing super crunchiness of the kangkung was great as always. I love kangkung at home just lightly steamed, boiled dipped in meat sauces or covered in lemon juice.

So tasty

Jubi ordered the mild ayam mie goreng, chicken fried noodles, after I bullied her into it instead of the nasi goreng, fried rice, that she wanted as I absolutely love noodles. She admitted afterwards that the first time she had egg noodles they had a really bad smell, but after having this she will give other egg noodle dishes a chance now. It was a very intensely flavoured dish that I need to say was spot on seasoning for fake Indomie Mi Goreng, so I'm not sure which I'm more impressed by, the fake or the real one's spot on flavouring. It was absolutely delicious, the noodles were charry and coated in whatever they used to impart that amazing mie goreng flavour. The chicken was tender and there was a lot of it everywhere and the egg clung to all the noodles.

As a side note, I called dibs on the pickles and Jubi protested that they were her pickles. When I suggested that we should get a plate of pickles as a side for $5 she declined, but ate all the pickles barring the last two. They were really good pickles.

Do want.

I picked the ayam goreng with sambal Ijo, fried chicken half with a green tomato and chilli sauce. The sauce was super spicy and extremely salty, I had about a third of it but couldn't finish it all. I warned Jubi off trying it because she finds even mildly spicy food too spicy for her most times. She did eat some of the chicken including the skin and remarked that it was very well cooked while remaining quite tender. I had to agree with her, the chicken was tasty despite having no other additional flavour but I suppose that's what the sambal is there for. 

Model side

Sambal side

I got a serve of plain steamed rice as well for $2. When it arrived, I was quite happy as it was a good 2-3 serves of rice and quite good for $2. 

Sendok Garpu:
Atmosphere: 7, really busy little restaurant, where a lot of Indonesian and Malaysian families were having meals and meeting up with friends. There were also a lot of adventurous large groups eating here as well. The placed was pretty packed for such a cold winter night.
Service: 8, super friendly service. The waiters and waitresses were constantly circling the menu, removing plates quite quickly and very pleasant to chat to. Even thought we were were out of the way, they would stop by our table to ask how our meal was going and if we needed anything. 
Food: 8, pretty damn good. I really enjoy the menu here and I would definitely go here again with a large group of people to try some more things. The mains were a touch smaller than I like, but the perfect size and price for you to get a few more plates and generously share between friends. 



I got contacted about promoting the James Street Food and Wine Trail, currently in its 3rd year and running from the 31st of July to the 3rd of August. Read the media release below and if you're keen I'll see you there! I'll keep updating this and posting it to the bottom of my posts until the day of the event :)