Tag: No Pork

A list of restaurants in my blog that is considered to contain no pork to the best of my knowledge

Sate House Bogowonto

Sate House Bogowonto Review:

This week’s review is from my hometown back in Surabaya, Indonesia. The restaurant is called Sate House Bogowonto. As the name would suggest, their menu heavily involves meat on a skewer.

Sate Kambing Muda (Daging) – Rp 37.5k / 5 skewers – Special lamb satay in Sate House Bogowonto style, most favourite menu

The lamb satay was the hero dish in this restaurant. It comes with either peanut sauce, sweet soy sauce with chilli, or a combination of both.

Sate Kambing Muda (Campur) – Rp 70k / 10 skewers – Special mixed lamb satay consists of meat, served with soya / peanut sauce

Basically this is still the lamb satay. However, instead of just the meat part, you get an assortment of ‘other’ things like liver, kidney, or even lamb fat.

Quite a lot of Indonesians actually enjoy this option more than just the meat, including myself.

Sate Ayam – Rp 37k / 10 skewers – Chicken satay

It’s probably not the best chicken satay in Surabaya. However, it was quite acceptable.

Gule Kikil Kambing – Rp 56k – Lamb leg Gulai cooked with special recipe from Bogowonto served with Mlinjo crackers

When you are eating a lamb satay in Surabaya, gule is usually its pairing. Gule is a kind of Indonesian curry with a consistency in between a clear soup and a thick curry paste. Seriously, warm rice + satay + gule = happiness!

Jamur Tiram Goreng Crispy – Rp 22k – Deep fried oyster mushroom with chilli sauce

I must say this is quite an unusual dish to be served at a satay house. However it’s a welcome addition for me as it added the crunchy element to my dining experience.

The final verdict for Sate House Bogowonto

Sate House Bogowonto serves quite a nice chicken and lamb skewers. However, their price is more on the expensive scale for a satay in Surabaya.

Did you know?

There were two items on the menu that we were really interested in ordering: oven-baked lamb and goat head curry. Unfortunately (or probably fortunately for you), they were not available at that time.

Rating for Sate House Bogowonto:

7.0 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: Rp 37k / 10 skewers for chicken and Rp 70k / 10 skewers for lamb

Place: 7.0 / 10

Details:

Jalan Musi No 37, Surabaya

+62 31 9901 4963

Sate House Bogowonto on Facebook

Jul 18, 2017
Remboelan

Remboelan Review:

This week’s post is from our trip to Indonesia earlier this year. It is an Indonesian restaurant in Jakarta called Remboelan. We went to the one in Plaza Senayan. The venue is a bit tricky to reach and there are no elevators going up to its level. So, it is quite a battle if you have your grandparents or disabled person dining with you. Also, given that it is located in one of the best malls in Jakarta, you could expect hefty price tags (by Indonesian standards).

The menu is like the who’s who list of famous food around the country. They have a lot of different kinds of food. You might want to take your time browsing through them. On this occasion, we went with a gazillion of people ordering gazillion of food. So, I might not be talking about each of them individually as this post would look more like an essay.

Hors d’oeuvre
In Indonesia, the appetizers look more like desserts than savoury dishes. Remboelan can do this assortment of snacks, or locally known as ‘jajan pasar‘, served before all guests arrive.

Soup

We ordered two soups from Central Java: asem-asem iga and tongseng sapi. They were both beef soup. I wasn’t really paying attention to them.

Asem-asem iga Putri Solo – 79k – Sour Beef Ribs Soup

Tongseng Sapi Telaga Sarangan – 60k – Curry-like beef soup

Meat

The strength of Indonesian food is in the meat and fish departments. Beef Balado from Padang and Javanese Beef Steak (known as Selat) from Solo are probably two of the most prominent dishes in Indonesia.

Balado is pretty spicy, so please make sure you are well equipped to eat it!

Balado Dendeng Hijau Padang Panjang – 65k – Dried beef with spicy balado sauce

Bistik sapi Jawa (Selat Solo) – 68k – Javanese beef steak

Ayam Krispi Saus Mangga Muda Midodari – 58k – Crispy Chicken with young mango sauce

Fish

Indonesians (read: my family) love grilled fish. We are blessed with overabundance of fish in the region. On this occasion, we chose gourami and snapper. The snapper had a spicy flavour native to the Eastern part of Indonesia, Manado.

Ikan Gurami bumbu kemiri – 95k – Grilled Gourami

Kakap utuh Woku Belanga Bunaken – 225k – Spicy Snapper

Kakap utuh Woku Belanga Bunaken – 225k

Vegetables and Noodles

These two vegetables, along with eggplant, are probably three of the most ordered by us. In addition to that, we love our noodles too!

Kangkung Bumbu Terasi – 42k – Water spinach with shrimp paste

Cah Taoge Jambal – 42k – stir-fried bean sprouts

Mie Goreng Remboelan – 43k – Remboelan Noodles

Drinks

Indonesians usually drink black coffee. Drinking with condensed milk, a la Vietnamese coffee, is probably the only other way.

Kopi Tubruk – Black coffee

Es Delima Larasati – 33k

The final verdict for Remboelan

I know the price seems to be quite excessive by Indonesian standards. However, Remboelan presented a collection of wonderful dishes that you would otherwise need to travel 1,000 kms for them.

Did you know?

Similar to other well-known restaurants, Remboelan has plenty branches all over Jakarta. They are mostly located in high-end malls.

Rating for Remboelan:

8.0 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: Rp 40k – Rp 225k ~ $4 – $20

Place: 8.5 / 10

Details:

Plaza Senayan, Lantai 4, Jl. Asia Afrika No 8, Jakarta

+62 21 5725088

www.remboelan.com

Jun 20, 2017
Good Feeling Thai

Good Feeling Thai Restaurant Review:

Good Feeling Thai restaurant is one of the newest restaurants in the Inner West, Sydney. It is located in the Dulwich Hill shopping area. They have a few of the usual dishes you see in a typical Thai restaurant. They also have a few interesting ones. We did not get to try many dishes on this occasion.

Gang Phed Pad Yang – $18.90 – Grilled roasted duck in curry and vegetables

I love eating duck. When visiting a new restaurant, duck is the ingredient that I would try to find first. I’m not quite sure about grilled roast duck as the menu stated. To me, it looks just like a roast duck. It was quite a sweet and savoury curry.

Pad Thai Pu Nim – $18.90 – Special pad thai with egg net and soft shell crab

Pad Thai is probably the most well-known Thai dish in Sydney. It is so famous that you could even find pad thai in a non-Thai restaurant!

Good Feeling Thai tweaked the recipe a bit. Instead of serving the usual rice noodles with something, they put this elaborate display. They introduced soft shell crab to complement the dish with its crunch and savoury flavour. They also blanketed the pad thai with egg net. The Good Feeling’s Pad Thai was very nice.

Fresh Coconut Juice – $6.00

I guess they could say it is just a fresh coconut. I love coconut when you can still scrape its inner wall and enjoy the fruit!

The final verdict for Good Feeling Thai Restaurant

Good Feeling Thai Restaurant is a restaurant worth coming back to. Their price was quite decent for the area and they have nice duck and pad thai dishes.

Did you know?
Good Feeling Thai restaurant serves halal food. There are not too many halal options in Inner West. This part of Inner West is actually more known for the Vietnamese restaurants.

Rating for Good Feeling Thai Restaurant:

7.5 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: $14.50 – $19 per main dish

Place: 7.5 / 10

Details:

Shop 1 / 362 – 372 New Canterbury Road, Dulwich Hill

+61 2 9518 3185

Jun 15, 2017
The Holy Crab

The Holy Crab Review:

Seafood in Indonesia is in abundance and is usually quite reasonably-priced. That’s why for this week’s review we went to a nice seafood place in Jakarta called The Holy Crab. The Holy Crab borrowed its seafood concept from Louisiana seafood boil.

However, we actually did not pay close attention to the price in the menu and missed the ‘little’ detail of price per 100 gr for the first 8 items (not just the top 4) in the menu. As a consequence, those 2 mud crabs were costing us more than half of the total bill!

Their menu can be divided into two: fried or boiled. Obviously their main attraction was the boiled one. You can select from the two sauces: Original Cajun or Garlic Pepper. There are four different hotness levels: Mild, Medium, Spicy, and Holy Moly!

Cajun Fries – 28k

Cajun fries is the staples that you need to order. You would get corn in some of the dishes below, but it’s not chips!

Onion Rings – 35k

Onion rings is one of my favourite dishes and I will always try to order them whenever I see one.

Mud Crab – 48k / 100gr

I love a good mud crab. However at $48 / kg, their price is almost on par with Sydney’s Mud Crab.

Shrimps – 40k / 100gr

We ordered the shrimps, that’s how the Americans said it, in garlic pepper sauce. It also came with corn cobs.

Crawfish – 48k / 100gr

I like crawfish, or what we call yabbies here in Australia, a lot more than lobster.

Hooks Telescope – 30k

The Hooks Telescope is the name they gave for a hot dog. It is part of the kids menu. The hot dog was quite plain and you had to put in the sauce separately. This is a big no-no for kids (my son especially). It wasn’t as exciting as the rest of the dishes.

The final verdict for The Holy Crab

Outside the little pricing ‘surprise’, we actually quite enjoyed our dinner at The Holy Crab.

Did you know?

The Holy Crab group has a few different restaurants in its group, Ersons Group. One of the more notable restaurants is the Holy Smokes.

Rating for The Holy Crab:

6.5 / 10

Taste: 7.0 / 10

Price: ~ $200 for 3 adults + 1 kid

Place: 7.0 / 10

Details:

Jl Gunawarman no. 55, Jakarta Selatan 12110

+62 21 2923 6155

http://theholycrab.co.id/

Mar 21, 2017
Medan Baru

Medan Baru Review:

The restaurant I am reviewing this week (I believe) is a restaurant that has achieved the legendary status in the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta. When you ask someone from Jakarta about Rumah Makan Medan Baru, they would most likely have heard about the place. We went to the original place in Pasar Baru, Jakarta.

You can feel the old-fashioned air as soon as you entered the restaurant. There was no menu being handed out in Medan Baru. Instead you are given plates of pre-selected dishes. The number of plates were not as massive as other similar restaurants in Indonesia.

Please be mindful that you do not need to finish them all. You are only charged for the number of plates you take the food out from.

Medan Baru is famous mainly for their following three dishes. You have to order it separately as they don’t come in that pre-set menu laid out above.

The first on the list is Sambal Ganja. Unfortunately (or fortunately and strangely, I might add), they ran out of it when we were there. Sambal ganja is a chili sauce that was native to Medan area. Ganja is actually an Indonesian word for cannabis leaf. Whether or not they actually put ganja in the ingredient, you would never know.

I was happy that I did not have to try chili sauce. It did leave a sour note to the whole experience.

Burung Punai

Burung punai is the local name for pink-necked green pigeons. So (yeah!), you are basically eating a whole pigeon. To make things more interesting, they actually left the frame intact. You got everything minus the head and feet.

There was not that much else to talk about.

Gulai Kepala Ikan

This is the bit that made me consider to revisit Medan Baru. Basically, it was fish head curry… A really big fish head. They have quite thick curry sauce and very fragrance dish.

The final verdict for Medan Baru

Personally, I was not too impressed with the quality of food at Rumah Makan Medan Baru. I believe my brother has oversold it a tad too much.

Did you know?

Rumah Makan Medan Baru has two more branches in Jakarta: Sunter and Puri Indah.

Rating for Medan Baru:

6.5 / 10

Taste: 6.5 / 10

Price: Rp 20k onwards per plate

Place: 6.5 / 10

Details:

Jl Krekot Bunder Raya No 65, Pasar Baru, Jakarta

+62 21 384 4273

Medan Baru on Zomato

Mar 2, 2017
Mottomoo – House of Hamburg

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Mottomoo has advised that they have changed their concept and menu. We will be updating the content of this blog post accordingly.

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Mottomoo Review:

I actually wasn’t planning on reviewing this restaurant. I was at Mottomoo because I tried to have a quick lunch for the little one before meeting a friend. Unexpectedly, I was quite impressed with their quality. Hence here we are talking about it!

The restaurant is located in one of the high end malls in Jakarta, called Pacific Place. The little one was craving for a Japanese restaurant. More specifically, the craving was for Japanese salmon teriyaki. It’s really hard to find even a decent salmon teriyaki in Indonesia.

Salmon Teriyaki Don – 63k – Japanese rice bowl with Norwegian Salmon fillet brushed in special house made teriyaki sauce

It was probably one of the more elaborate teriyaki don I have ever seen. In addition to the usual suspects, they also added mushroom, corn and seaweed.

Nicely done salmon teriyaki = happy kid.

Cheese Tater Tots – 45k

I thought I could use some snack before the main dish. I chose deep fried cheese sticks with some sort bolognaise dipping sauce.

Mushroom pepper Hamburg with Truffle – 89k.

This is what I love the most about Mottomoo. Japanese Hamburg is a fusion of Japanese and Western-style cooking. I love how Mottomoo grilled its Hamburg. It was still juicy and mixed really well with the mushroom pepper and truffle. Have that with a bowl of rice, and you have one nice meal!

The final verdict for Mottomoo – House of Hamburg

I did not expect their food could be good. But, I was wrong. I enjoyed the meal we had at Mottomoo.

Did you know?

Pacific Place has a real-sized sail boat (floating on a miniature lake) inside the mall!

Rating for Mottomoo:

7.5 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: Rp 50k – Rp 80k for main

Place: 7.5 / 10

Details:

Pacific Place Mall, 5^th floor

Jl Jenderal Sudirman, SCBD, Jakarta

+62 21 5797 3026

Mottomoo on Facebook

Feb 17, 2017