Space for Brabus

There’re enough guitar-lickings, mascara-wearing-boys, break-dancings, 80’s-style-geeky-boys-get-the-popular-girls, and dance-offs in "Dance, Dance" to bring you 10 years back to the much simpler time, where everything is still possible and the future is still wide open…

What is it about food and me? Is it because I find solace in food?  Sigh…

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"

                                                              - Virginia Woolf -

Guilty pleasure of the moment: Quickly’s mango milk tea with boba

We went to Warung Daun restaurant yesterday.  The concept is Sundanese food, with organic raw materials and no MSG.  We came there around 2 pm.  The parking lot was packed.  We ordered a bunch of stuffs, from fried gurame to sambel ngebul.  Then we waited for a long time…and when the food came, the waitress said that half of our order is already out of stock hmmm… So we ordered more stuffs…then some were out of stock…then we ordered some more…and again, some were out of stock…and the funny thing is that it was always the same waitress who came to bring the bad news hahaha…so everytime we saw her walking toward our table, we readily grabbed the menu and started picking out stuffs to order.  I guess someone has to do the dirty stuffs…

Anyways…the portions are sooooo small.  I guess we were expecting bigger portions like the ones at Bumbu Desa restaurant in Bandung.  When the food came, we just started laughing…my dad even pointed to the chicken and said "pigeons" hahaha cuz it was just so small…we ordered half a chicken and the chicken that came was the size of th usual chicken breast.  My mom even asked the waiter…is this it?? The waiter just smiled and slowly stepped away from our table…

In terms of the taste, I like the fried chicken, maranggi satay, and sambel ngebul.  The chicken was tender and tasty…small, but tasty.  The maranggi satay’s seasoning was interesting, there was no usual satay peanut sauce and the meat chunks were bigger than the usual satay.  It kinda tasted like grilled empal.  Sambel ngebul was served hot, mixed with kemangi leaves and cucumber slices..it was gooooood. 

The other stuffs that we ordered: es kopyor, karedok, fried gurame, fried tofu and tempe, kangkung belacan, orak arik salted fish, and fried banana with cheese tasted ok…the fried banana should be sweeter…and kangkung belacan is kangkung belacan *grinz*.

So what should we learn from this experience? One, we should come during the normal dining time to make sure we get our orders.  Two, we should order a lot of stuffs to be really full.  And three, nothing beats Bumbu Desa.

I already ate dinner about an hour ago…yet somehow I still feel hungry.  Is this what happened when you just had 2 oranges for dinner.  Aah, the beauty of living in Jakarta…there’s no opportunity for exercise, especially if our treadmill at home just blew its dynamo on its own…sigh…

Anywho….we, Nicole, Ita, Anna and their respective bfs…and moi, went to Penang Bistro yesterday.  Having skipped the last 2 chances to eat at a restaurant named Penang (one is in NY and the other is in Chicago), I was really looking forward to the evening out.

The food is Malaysian…since there were 7 of us, we ordered a lot: 2 Canai Bread with beef curry, mango chicken, sizzling beef, oriental beef, some squid (didn’t pay attention to the name), and kangkung belacan.  We ate all of these with some rice.

The mango chicken was not too sweet (nice).  This is their specialty…It was breaded chicken (complete with the bones) served with young mango slices on top and sweet sauce.  I just ate the chicken, without the mango, cuz I just don’t believe eating main dishes with certain fruits…like pizza with pineaples, which is such a no-no in my book. Strangely, I always ended up with the bone parts, never the meat parts…maybe it was a strange ploy that my friends set up? *grinz*

The sizzling beef was really smooth and tasty. It came in a hot plate but there was no usual fuzzy smoke that usually comes with foods in hot plates… you know what I mean right? The one that make people stare at you at a restaurant, so in retribution, you have to try to fan or blow the smoke away as hard as you can to make people realize…godamnit, I don’t want this smoke as much as you do, now go away so we all can eat *grinz*.  It’s basically beef slices with sauce, peas, and onion slices…but it was really yummy *slurpz*. 

The cane bread was addictive.  It was a thin bread that is crunchy at the edge and soft in the middle.  The bread was not flat like we all know, but kinda like a jumble of mess…it was kinda like a flower…so to eat it, you have to tear it off and dip it in the flavorful curry.  And of course, you just want to tear…and tear…and tear…

Kangkung belacan is kangkung belacan, nothing special.

And now, on to the weird stuffs…the oriental beef was kinda weird, since it has cakwe in it, and the squid was crunchy.  I just never tasted a crunchy squid, I’m sorry, but I just never. 

As for drinks…I just had iced tea (I was on a budget *grinz*).

The service, however, it was kind of a mess.  My first evidence: There were 7 of us at the table.  The first waiter just took the drink order for 3 of us, then left.  We then had to get another waiter to take the rest of the drink orders.  The second evidence: The waiter brought wrong drinks to our table…twice. Maybe because it was Saturday night? Maybe because it was a full house? I don’t want to be difficult, but I just thought that the service can be better, knowing it is a fine dining restaurant.

The decor is a minimalist setting.  The chair has a full back, which I like, since people here make such a fuss if they see only an inch of your back skin, between your pants and your blouse.  Some of the chair are transparents, which I think are cute.  The lighting was bright.  I think it’s a family oriented place, kinda noisy…well, we WERE noisy hehehe.  So don’t really recommend bringing dates here.

Overall, it was a good experience. 

P.S. I was too lazy to bring my camera, so the pictures were taken from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coffeefloat/24391740/in/set-482109/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coffeefloat/24391742/in/set-482109/