Sunday 23 January 2011

Jakarta

Jakarta
702 Brunswick St New farm (Same Building as Alibi Room)
3/5
My visit to Jakarta was another of these family events, where finding a place that suits the tastes of people coming is difficult due to the fact that they all have contradicting tastes. Jakarta performed well in that regard, as it did in most aspects. So after making a booking for 5 people at 7:30pm on a Saturday I was surprised by the fact that it appeared that booking may not have been necessary (I have been burnt in Brisbane before for Saturday night walk-in), the table that had been reserved for us was obvious, being the only odd numbered setting in the restaurant.

The decor, while suffering from the fact that it feels a little like you’re in strip mall, is wonderfully decorated with rich earthy colours that create comfortable ambience (excepting the honking cars on Brunswick st). The Service is of an acceptable level, while lacking the attention that many restaurants have, it was not hard to get a waitresses attention, besides too much attention can be a bad thing. The promptness of the kitchen however was silly quick with our food appearing shortly after ordering, and the timing of banquet dishes was nigh perfect with our table just finishing a dish before the next dish came out.

That only leaves the food, which was delicious. We ordered a banquet ($32 pp incl’g dessert) for the entire table, which allowed me to taste several different dishes. Again as with last time with Indonesian, I still lack the knowledge of what is good and not. But this time I believe that the dishes were better, with the dishes having a significant flavour of ginger and citrus tones as the only overarching flavours present in all dishes, Sate that tasted less like peanuts and rather had an earthy smoky character that more likely to be in good scotch than food. The food seemed like it had real sense of sweetness without being ridiculous and being pleasant overall.

I would return to Jakarta and suggest that everyone visit it, purely because Indonesian food is fantastic as far as I can tell, and we need to support cuisines in this city that aren’t just steak, dodgy Chinese and dodgy Thai.
Jakarta has a website with a full menu at http://www.jakarta.com.au/menu.html
Beer cost under $6.5 with imports such as Bintang (Indonesia’s most well known brand) being the most expensive, there is a wine list however as Jakarta is BYO wine and there is a Liquorland next door I would suggest BYO

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