Archive for the ‘Indonesian’ Category
V Rating: VVV The business card for Java Cafe carries the slogan ‘excellent Indonesian cuisine.’ Could not have said it better myself. Java is my favourite Indonesian restaurant in Sydney. The food is authentic, the waiting staff are lovely, the atmosphere is thriving and the atmosphere screams relaxed cafeteria. It’s also easy to find on busy Avoca street - just look for the bright yellow sign and the shop window with a giant palm tree. The good news for vegetarians is that there are 13 vegetable dishes. Our table ordered gado gado, semur terong (fried battered eggplant in a sweet soya sauce) and sayur lodeh. The vegetables in the gado gado were fresh contrasted well with the thick, sweet peanut sauce. One of my favourite things about Java is that they serve great tempeh. Although we didn’t order it this time around, I’d recommend the fried tofu and tempeh dish. Java is not a glamourous eating experience. If that’s your thing, try Jimbaran further down the road. However, it can’t be beaten for great value, authentic Indonesian food. The only catch is that a lot of people in Sydney are in on the secret, so make sure you book a table to avoid a half an hour wait.
V Rating: VV Jimbaran sits serenely on Avoca Street in Randwick, a world away from the squashed and noisy Indonesian cafes on nearby Anzac Parade.
I assume that the restaurant is named for Jimbaran Bay in Bali, tragic site of bombings in October 2005, and whose upmarket restaurants were popular with Western tourists. Last Sunday, L. and I were led away from this romantic front area (perhaps they knew that even with plastic covers I wasn’t to be trusted) and into the large, covered back courtyard.
We eyed off the vegetable curry (lodeh), but opted for the fried egg noodles with vegetables and Morning Glory stir-fried with a preserved soya bean sauce. The noodles were huge and beautifully presented on a banana leaf. There were not a lot of vegetables in amongst the noodles, but it was certainly a filling dish. I was keen to try the morning glory and it reminds me of being in Asia. I don’t remember morning glory from Indonesia but ate a lot of it in Laos (not an overly veggie friendly place). It’s not a dish you see a lot in Australia - perhaps because it’s less euphemistically known as river weed, which makes it hard to move on a menu.
I ummed and ahhed about giving Jimbaran a VVV - the food is well-priced, the atmosphere is lovely and the menu has a good range of traditional Indonesian and vegetarian dishes, although other friends tell me that Jimbaran is famous for its seafood dishes. My only hesitation was that the vegetarian food I tried was pleasant but not particularly flavoursome. Disappointingly, Jimbaran doesn’t make use of tempeh or tofu, which are common in Indonesian, and half of the vegetarian dishes were variations on noodle or fried rice. The rating is provisional - I’d like to go again and try the lodeh, fried eggplant, and cap cay which might make better vegetarian choices than the options.
V-Rating: VV The eastern suburbs in Sydney is synonymous with the rich and beautiful, and all the trappings that accompany them. However, a visit to the Anzac Parade restaurant strip in Kingsford provides a healthy reminder that there is another very diverse and interesting side to the area. I’m a fan of the Anzac Parade restaurants. There’s a great range of Asian restaurants to choose from, including Indonesian, Malaysian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. With the University of New South Wales just around the corner, the emphasis is on cheap and cheerful food pitched to a student budget and milieu.
Last Sunday Andy and I thought we’d make the most of our rental car and try out the delights of Anzac Parade. We settled on Ratu Sari, an Indonesian restaurant that is relatively ‘up market’ by comparison to its neighbours. We were lured to Ratu Sari by the long list of vegetable dishes on the menu. It was only when we got inside that we realised ‘vegetable’ was not the same as ‘vegetarian’. Most dishes contained shrimp paste, prawn crackers or occasionally chicken. While this was a bit disappointing given our initial high hopes, there were still a few wholly vegetarian offerings and full marks to Ratu Sari for being clear about their contents of their vegetable dishes. For entree we tried the deep fried cauliflower and krupuk singkong (deep fried cassave chips - always a favourite with Andy). For mains we shared the sayur lodeh (a vegetable curry in a coconut milk base) and the vegetarian cap cai. The last dish was a recommendation of the waiter after we explained that we were vegetarian and keen on a dish without seafood or meat products. The mains were both surprisingly good using authentic Indonesian ingredients. The vegetable curry was our favourite, and used choko, as well as more conventional vegetables. The sizzling, fresh cap cai was so big that as much as we wanted to, we couldn’t finish it. |
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