KennethT

Lunch that day was held on the beach as it didn't look like it was going to rain (for a change - they were saying that the weather was really weird this year. July is usually the start of the dry season there, but it was starting later this year). This is interesting - while most of Indonesia is Muslim, and therefore doesn't eat pork, North Sulawesi is predominantly Christian so pork is popular. In fact, on some of the surrounding small islands, there are tiny villages next to a beach but the main building is a huge Christian church that dominates the landscape. The setting... Pork with local herbs along with 3 different sambal. On the left is a local sambal called dabu-dabu. Typically, dabu-dabu is blow-your-head-off spicy - like eye-watering, nose-running, hiccup-inducing spicy. It's made from a lot of chillies, shallots, garlic, unripened tomato and lime juice. All the ingredients are sliced rather than pounded. Hot coconut oil is then poured over the top which just slightly wilts the ingredients. This version was more like a really tasty tomato salad. Over the time we were there, I ate tons of this stuff. The staff kept worrying that it would be too spicy for us, but we assured them that it actually was barely spicy at all and we tried our best to clean them out of it! They also started making separate dishes of it for us so they could make it spicier (they said that most of their guests complained if things got too spicy) but even then it wasn't close to what it would normally be for locals. Anyway, next to the dabu-dabu is more sambal bakar, and next to that is sambal matah, which is typical in Bali. The side station was making sauteed squid to order. They called it squid with galangal, but I thought it was only reminiscent of galangal - it was more turmeric foreward. Very tasty, especially with the various sambal. The pineapple on this trip ranged from fantastic to amazing. We couldn't get enough.

Breakfast the next morning. Pancake (with slices of coconut within) with rambutan honey, and cinnamon roll More fantastic pineapple Chocolate chip muffin

Diving interlude..... this is the first time I've used any kind of camera while diving. Since I didn't want it to be too distracting, I decided to use a GoPro in video mode. Visibility was typically around 45 to 60 feet, although sometimes less if it had rained the night before. For reference, this is a map of the area: The large land mass to the East is the mainland of North Sulawesi, the Manado area. Our hotel was located at the white dot on the west side of the island closest to the mainland. Most of the diving in this area is focused around the island of Bunaken, which is known for being home to tons of turtles (both green sea turtles and hawksbill turtles) and also lots of macro life - which basically means small critters like sea horses, shrimp of various kinds, nudibranches, etc. One of the green sea turtles we saw - this one was probably around 4-5 feet long. I finally got to see a spotted eagle ray!!!! I've been dying to see these for years. At the time I was filming, I was actually focused on a turtle, but our guide started shouting (underwater) to get my attention so I wouldn't miss it. It was pretty far away but it looked to have a wingspan of maybe 8-10 feet. One thing you may notice is at the beginning of the video - Bunaken is known for having a sheer wall that drops straight down into the abyss. Cold water from the deep, with tons of nutrients, hits the wall and rises to the surface which attracts tons of marine life. We were really happy to see that all of the coral reefs that we saw were in really great shape. I still have to go through a ton of footage but I've got to make space on my phone first - hopefully I can do that over the weekend.

Dinner that night: Some kind of generic beef curry with western style potatoes In addition to the buffet, they had a live station that changed every meal - this type was some kind of Chinese stir fry with chicken, seafood, etc. or an Italian pasta of some kind. I didn't want the whole stir fry, but I did get some stir fried vegetables. Peanut caramel cake and more amazing pineapple.

The next morning, we were in a bit of a rush to eat breakfast (starts at 7), go back to the room to get our equipment, then get back to the dive center by 7:30 so we didn't take any breakfast photos. We had more time the next few days since the dive center held all of our equipment, and we didn't have to get there until 7:45. Lunch that day: Chicken curry, kangkong and sambal bakar. The curry was tasty, but nothing out of the ordinary - a standard turmeric heavy coconut curry. The sambal bakar is interesting though as I had never heard of it before. Evidently, it's something only done in North Sulawesi. It's a typical fried sambal made from chillies, shallots, garlic, etc, but once finished, it's put in a bowl and a piece of charred, smoking coconut husk is dropped on top and the whole thing is covered so that the smoke aroma gets into the sambal. I'm thinking about how I could do this at home - I have a Cameron's stovetop smoker and I have a lot of coconut coir that I use in my garden that's already ground up (looks like coffee grounds) so I might be able to smoke a dish of sambal. It would be quite a bit of effort to do, so I'd like to do a big batch, and freeze most of it, but I don't know if the smoke aroma would get lost once frozen.

Just for reference, this is a partial map of the region showing where we were (Jakarta on the island of Java) and where we were going (North Sulawesi): To the North-West of Jakarta is the island of Sumatra, home of the wonderful padang food we had been enjoying for the past few days. After landing on time around 1:45 in Manado, the main city of North Sulawesi, our hotel picked us up at the airport. We were told it would be about a 45 minute drive to the "marina" to get the boat to the island, but midway through the drive through the city, it started pouring rain. Like biblical torrential downpour kind of rain. Localized flooding kind of rain. Anyway, by the time we got to the marina, which really isn't much more than a concrete space for a small boat to dock to, the ocean had at least 6 foot swells and we were told that it wouldn't be safe to either board the boat, or be in it on the way to the island. So, they were sending a larger boat to a different pier - so another 45 or so minute drive and by the time we got there, it had pretty much stopped raining. The swells weren't nearly as bad in this area so we had no trouble boarding and it wasn't too rough going once we were underway. About midway through the trip from Manado to the island, we encountered a pod of dolphins!!!!! There were probably 20-30 of them! Some of them were porpoising in the distance, others were swimming along side the boat having fun swimming in our wake. Dolphin swimming alongside the boat Dolphins, dolphins everywhere!! If you turn on the sound, you can hear our (and the people we were on the boat with - other guests who were on our flight) excitement. Once we got to the hotel - much later than expected due to the weather delays and the fact that the boat stopped in the middle for us to hang out with the dolphins for a bit so it was probably around 4:30 in the afternoon by the time the boat "docked" at the beach. The hotel doesn't really have a dock for the boats - the boat pulls up to the beach. Normally when used for diving, you just walk in knee deep water to get to the boat, but since we were coming from the airport, they put down a maybe 8 inch wide plank of wood for us to walk on to get to the dry part of the beach. Like the other dive hotel we stayed in a couple years ago (scroll down quite a bit to get to the island portion), there's really nothing on this island other than the hotel and a small village that has no restaurants or stores - just a collection of small homes, most of the residents of which work at the hotel, so all meals are included in the hotel rate. Meals are at set times, and our arrival was in between those times. But unlike the previous hotel, where we arrived around 3:30 and had to wait until 7 to get something to eat, here, once we got to the main building for check-in and orientation, they provided us with a choice of "snacks" - either some kind of sandwich with french fries, fried rice or fried noodles. My wife and I got the noodles and it was like a main lunch portion, complete with sambal on the side. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of it since they were also talking to us about the hotel at the same time. After getting settled in our room, we headed to dinner as soon as they opened at 7. Like the other hotel, this hotel provided both Western food as well as local Indonesian dishes (as well as other Asian things) but unlike the other hotel which varied by meal time (lunch was Western, dinner was local), this hotel provided both options at every meal which I was happy about. All meals are buffet style. Since we had a pretty big snack just a few hours before, we weren't that hungry. Fantastic pineapple and dragonfruit. Dragonfruit is relatively flavorless, but it is really juicy and great for hydration - and tastes great with a small squeeze of lime juice! Although I found out a few days later what happens when you eat a lot of the purple dragonfruit. Hint, it doesn't stain just your clothes! Cumin lamb. This isn't really Indonesian, but it was pretty tasty. Passionfruit mousse

Nice campfire grill!!! Also, where did you get the anti-gravity grill for the chicken? I didn't know they were invented yet. Do they work any better than standard grills?

We were leaving early the next morning - our flight to Manado left around 9AM, so with Jakarta's traffic, we needed to leave the hotel around 6, all of which means that we wanted to have an early and fast dinner... so back to the food court at the mall! This place makes mostly grilled or fried chicken or duck. Fried duck with sambal hitam (the dark brown paste on top), with a side of sambal terasi. Sambal hitam is not spicy at all, and comes from the island of Madura, just off the coast of Surabaya in east Java. Most recipes I can find for sambal hitam say that it contains kluwak, which would definitely help in turning it such a dark brown, almost black color (hitam means black in Indonesian). This would also make sense since the other dish that I know of from that area, rawon, the beef soup, also uses kluwak. The sambal terasi is quite spicy and contains shrimp paste, for which it is named. Grilled chicken with sambal matah. Sambal matah is the most common sambal in Bali. It is one of the few sambal in the Indonesian canon that are "raw" and not fried. I put raw in quotes because the finishing step is to pour hot oil over the sliced mixture which does cook it slightly. It's also a sliced sambal, as opposed to most others that are pounded or ground. It is made up of mainly shallots, lemongrass, chillies, kaffir lime leaves, garlic, shrimp paste and lime juice. Both duck and chicken were cooked well and both really good. It's so nice to have a mall with a huge food court attached to the hotel!! In the airport the next morning, we had plenty of time to sit down at a restaurant after checking our bags. A location of Sate Khas Senayan is in Terminal 3, so, sate it is! Ginger tea Stir fried kangkong (water spinach) with shrimp paste Chicken sate lilit. Sate lilit is common in Bali - it uses minced meat and seasonings but not in a casing. Many times it is made from fish. This one is served with sambal matah, again from Bali. Chicken sausage sate, in casing, sitting in sweet soy sauce with crushed chillies and sliced shallots. Lamb sate - both cubed lamb (with that delicious piece of lamb fat) and lamb sausage. So that's it for the Jakarta portion of this trip! Up next, an island off the coast of Manado, in North Sulawesi.

After view the mosque, we went to lunch at the last padang restaurant of the trip. This one is a large chain of padang restaurants - they have probably around 20 locations, if not more... Restoran Sederhana Our table once we were seated... Of course, we had to order more paru goreng - fried beef lung: This one wasn't as crispy and light as the one in the other place. Classic beef rendang. This is supposedly how the original rendang is supposed to be - everything else, with more sauce, etc are regional variations. The flavor of this was so deep, spiced with cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. True rendang should also not be made with any sugar - although Malaysian versions typically use palm sugar. Also, it's one of the few things that don't use any MSG - instead, it uses a serundeng of toasted coconut that is pounded into a paste. Gallons of coconut milk are boiled down to this dry paste over about 8 hours. The beef was so tender you cut it with a spoon. Singkong in mild turmeric curry Dendeng balado - this didn't have the smokiness of the first place and their balado had more shallots - I think this is the most typical version and the smoky version was a delicious outlier. Lamb gulai. Gulai uses spices similar to rendang but not cooked that long so it stays thin. Sambal ijo.

After breakfast we went out to a local market: This is a closeup of the left side of the bin in shadow above. Here you have klewak (aka keluak, aka kluwak, aka buah keluak). To the right of that is turmeric. Even further right, not pictured here, is kencur, ginger and galangal with some roaches walking around them for good measure. Two types of chillies - in the foreground is cabe rawit - what they call Thai chillies but they are different - definitely more plump and fleshy than a standard Thai chilli but just as spicy. I don't know if theyr'e a different cultivar or if they're harvest later and are more ripe. To the right is cabe keriting (curly chilli) - these are typically 4-6 inches long and medium spicy. I'm pictured looking at some galangal that is so fresh, it's pink. Bok choy, cabbage, chayote squash, green and red tomatoes (it's common for the red tomatoes to be under ripe - they're used for their acidity). Various dried/fermented fish/shrimp closeup The leafy stuff is pandan, rhizomes in the baskets above it, lemongrass After the market, we went to see Masjid Istiqlal - the main mosque and the largest mosque in SE Asia. It is gigantic! It can hold about 200,000 people and does so a few days a year. Each rectangle is the space for 1 person to pray

Breakfast the next day - this is the last breakfast at this hotel as we would be leaving for the airport before breakfast opened the next day: Tongseng is like a thin soup or stew complete with stir fried bok choy, green and red sambals and some puffed beef skin crackers. I missed those crackers the days before - they are so addictive! Fantastic pineapple Green chilli chicken - the same as the other day With more sambal, a squid ink cracker and more puffed beef skin crackers A chocolate hazelnut dessert because vacation! The center On the right is a pandan gel with palm sugar gel on top. On the left, inside the banana leaf: Pandan glutinous rice (like mochi) filled with: shredded coconut cooked in palm sugar At one point, my wife just loaded up on shrimp chips, beef skin crackers, squid ink crackers and a variety of sambal. The green and red sambals you've seen before... on the left is a peanut sambal that is sweetened with palm sugar. Very sad that this is the last day at this breakfast buffet!!!!

Breakfast the next day: Beef soup station: beef meatballs, fish wontons and fried fish wontons, shredded cabbage and bean sprouts wheat noodles (in the back), rice noodles, (l-r) kecap manis, chilli sauce, sambal, fried shallots Rice and wheat noodles with beef meatballs and beef broth Beef in thin curry From the patisserie: Bolu serang semut - caramel cake that typically looks like an ant nest, with walnut, fruit and vanilla sauce Chocolate ganache with candied orange in the center, topped with cocoa nibs You may be wondering, "why so many desserts" for breakfast? Sometime around mid-meal, I started not feeling so well - when that happens, I tend to get a sweet tooth! Turned out that my wife was also not feeling 100%, so we decided to just lay around the pool for most of the day so that we could rest and hopefully knock whatever we had out of our system. At the pool, we had a few pots of ginger tea and some jasmine tea and started to feel a bit better in time to have a late lunch there: Fried chicken Beef burger with bacon and onion rings. The onion rings were perfect - crisp but you could bite through cleanly. Since we had a late lunch and weren't really hungry, we just went to bed early, hoping to wake up feeling 100%.

We were still getting tired pretty early, so we decided to have dinner at a good looking Indonesian restaurant in the mall.... but before then, we stopped at the supermarket for more mangoes for the room: These are Kluwek (aka keluak, aka kluwak) - black nuts. For scale, each nut is about 2 inches or so across. They are hard as rocks - you need to hit them with a hammer to open them! Inside, the meat is oily and is like a smooth paste. In Indonesia, it's commonly used in a dish from East Java called Rawon, which is like a soup - we had it last time here. In Peranakan Singapore/Malaysian food, it's used in a few dishes, but one that I like to make at home a lot is called ayam buah keluak (buah keluak is the name of the nut) - typically, to cook, you scoop out the meat, season with salt and a little sugar, sometimes mix with ground pork, and stuff back into the shell then cook in the sauce with the chicken. The flavor of keluak is really hard to describe - it is chocolately, earthy, but also has a fermented almost alcoholic quality to it as the nut is actually fermented! When first harvested, the nuts have cyanide inside and must be treated in a lengthy process in order to be edible. It is first roasted, and then buried in the ashes for about a month (hence the fermentation). It is then cleaned and ready for sale. In order to use at home, it is typically soaked in water for 5 days or so, changing the water every day - only then is it ready to be cracked open. A lot of work, but sooo worth it. The restaurant for dinner: The menu was exhaustive!!! I think they tried to have dishes from almost every region in Indonesia!!! https://menu.remboelan.com/ Every table has a basket of crackers (krupuk). We took some shrimp crackers - really shrimpy. Stir fried kangkong (water spinach) White rice Chicken with sambal penyet - the chicken is marinated, then boiled, then fried and then smashed in a mortar with the sambal made from chillies, shallot, garlic, tomato, etc. Whole fish (I don't remember what type, but it was meaty with no small bones) in sauce Woku, from Manado which is in North Sulawesi. We will be heading to that area soon for some diving, but we'll be staying at a hotel on a small island, and the food there is certainly Westernized so I thought this would be a good time to have it in a way made more for locals. We also had it a few times when in Manado previously a couple years ago - you can see it here, but scroll down a bit. The spice paste is made from shallots, galangal, garlic, turmeric, etc. but also is made with a bunch of sliced herbs like pandan, turmeric leaf and Thai basil. Once we got back to the hotel room, we set up our supermarket haul: Mangosteen.... my favorite!!!

After breakfast, we decided to try to walk around an area that was supposed to be among the most walkable in Jakarta - turns out, there really wasn't much to see there, so no interesting photos. For lunch, we went to a different local padang restaurant... A lot of padang restaurants put their dishes in the window. The selection provided as we sat down. Quite a few of the dishes are wrapped in plastic - to prevent contamination from one table to the next if not eaten, but not all of them for some reason. One dish we ordered - paru goreng - fried beef lung. This is a padang classic and is like a delicious meat cracker. This one was even better than others we had as it had an almost puffed texture to it. Most places make it so it's a little hard and you have to gnaw on it a bit but this one was almost crispy. Delicious with sambal ijo. Chicken balado Fried chicken serundeng - this is how it's normally presented unlike the restaurant before where the serundeng was served alongside. This serundeng was (I think) more shallot heavy than candlenut based. More singkong (cassava leaves) in thin curry Their version of beef rendang - while the sauce is thick, it's definitely not as thick as it should be in theory - as you'll see later on... After lunch, we headed back to the hotel for some more pool time.

Breakfast the next day at the hotel: Sur la plate: Gulai is the thinnest of curries on the way to rendang - it's soupy. With sambal ijo and merah and the squiggly thing is a fish based puffed cracker. This is basically chicken cooked in sambal ijo... With even more sambal ijo/merah, and some stir fried bok choy with a lot of garlic, and shrimp chips. More jamu The hotel also has an in-house patisserie and some of their wares are available during breakfast as part of the buffet.... this is a coconut creme brulee. Japanese souffle pancake - we weren't huge fans of this Chicken tongseng - like a thin soupy curry, with shrimp chips.

I don't think they all are - for example, I don't remember the sambal hitam (the black one) being spicy at all - it may not even have any chillies in it. But for other sambals, they vary depending on the region. I don't think that the padang sambal ijo and merah are very spicy at all, but a sambal called dabu-dabu from Manado (on the island of Sulawesi) made traditionally, not for tourists, will blow your head off. But people from Manado pride themselves on having the spiciest food in all of Indonesia.... But it's all relative. What I may find mild, you may find very spicy so it's hard to say. And people's spice tolerance can change over time. My wife used to be sensitive to spicy food and couldn't tolerate much - now she piles on the sambal - at one point at breakfast, she made herself a plate of 5 different sambal and just went to town with the shrimp chips!

By the time we were finished with tea/pool time, we were exhausted (we were still jetlagged) so we went to the food court at the mall for something quick to eat and so we wouldn't take forever to get somewhere in the Jakarta traffic. The food court takes up most of the mall's 4th floor and has tons of choices - many Indonesian, but there's also a few Korean places, some Japanese - even a KFC... It's design is that it's hard to see how many places there are as it snakes around.... Most places make the food to order and provide you with a buzzer so you know when your food is ready. Duck with sambal hitam (the dark brown stuff) and sambal terasi. Sambal hitam comes from east Java - from the island of Madura just off of the city of Surabaya. It's typically served with fried duck or fried chicken. It is absolutely delicious but I don't know what's in it, yet. This is definitely one thing I intend to learn to make - I'll put a recipe in RecipEgullet when I get it how I want it. Sambal terasi is a fried chilli sambal that includes shrimp paste. Fried chicken - came with sambal terasi. While the portions were small (as is typical) we weren't that hungry as we had such a big lunch so it was fine as it was. It also came with rice, unpictured.

We decided to go back to a padang restaurant that we visited on the last trip since it was relatively close to the monument... Medan Baru. In the window, you can see several of the dishes they're working on: So, I think I explained this in the last Jakarta trip, but this is the way a typical Padang restaurant works - most dishes are already pre-made in large quantities or ready to be finished quickly. When you sit down at the table, they bring over a large selection of dishes and leave them at your table. Once you finish eating, the server tabulates what you've eaten and provides the bill - each plate they bring is a small portion - if you try any of it, then it's yours. This place does it a little differently - when you sit down, a couple of servers bring over a few trays of dishes for you to pick from, like a display model, and then they bring your order immediately after you make your choices. After we ordered, I walked back to the area where they kept the display models to take the photos. In this restaurant, they've covered the dishes with plastic wrap and added labels! Also, we ordered a few dishes that are not displayed but that they either make or can make. I did this by giving my Indonesian a workout... hehe... Dendeng balado. Balado is a typical padang preparation involving (typically) 3 types of chillies, shallots, garlic, and lots of other stuff. It is incredibly addictive. Almost anything can and will be balado-ified - chicken, beef, shrimp, eggs, tempeh, you name it. Dendeng are thin slices of beef that are simmered in the balado spice paste, then fried and covered with the balado mixture. This was a great version - it had a really nice smokey-ness to it. The vegetable at the bottom is singkong - cassava leaves. They're the most common padang vegetable and are usually available either just plain boiled (served with sambal) or like this in a mild turmeric curry. We also got a plate of the sambal merah (red sambal) and the sambal ijo (green sambal). Their sambal ijo was quite oily - it was swimming. Typically (and also the last time we were there) the sambal just sits in a small puddle of oil. Both sambal merah and ijo are both fried sambals. Ayam goreng serundeng. Fried chicken. Many times (as you'll see later on) the serundeng (the brown crumbly stuff) is piled on top of the chicken - here they gave it to us separately. The chicken is first simmered in a spice paste which can vary in ingredients. Some are very galangal heavy, or shallot heavy while others, like this one, have candlenuts being the main ingredient. Near the end of simmering, grated coconut is added. Once done, the chicken is removed and drained, as well as the solids of the simmering liquid. The chicken is then fried and then the solids are fried and piled on top. To me, it's the best fried chicken ever. This candlenut heavy version is very earthy but my favorite is the galangal heavy version. Lamb (or goat) curry. The word for lamb and goat is the same in Indonesian, so I'm not sure which this is - this portion was mostly ribs and other knuckle type meat. The curry sauce is similar to rendang, but not cooked as long so it dries out. It has a strong flavor of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. This restaurant is known for its fish head curry. They have 3 different sizes - this is the small but there was a ton of meat on this head. The curry was really unctuous with tons of coconut cream and quite mild. Once finished, we rolled out of there and went back to the hotel for some tea/relaxing by the pool time.

Thanks for bringing us along again but I'm sorry to see the state of the coral. We spent a few days diving in Indonesia and I was so happy to see the great state of the coral walls and reefs there. I'm still trying to get video and stuff off of my GoPro - I'll add it to my trip report when I get to that point....

@Shelby The young girl was so sweet and shy - we couldn't ignore her. Basically, we saw her talking to her mother about us and then the mother approached us and asked for permission. They were so happy when we agreed for some pictures, and then proceeded to have pictures taken with at least 4 phones because everyone wanted their own. So, of course, we then gave them our phone for our own set! The mangoes were ok. I still haven't found an Indonesian mango that I love like some of the Thai ones. Some were juicy but pretty flavorless and some smelled like they were doused in a bucked of perfume. Most were fiberless, but not all.

After breakfast, we headed to the supermarket located in the mall connected to our hotel to get some fruit for our room. This is the same supermarket as before. Durian - you could smell this around the corner in the mall... After picking up a bunch of mangoes (they had no mangosteen on this day, but had some later on), we went off for some sightseeing. We decided to see the National Monument It's in the largest public square in SE Asia. It's here where we became a tourist attraction ourselves, again, as this is a large attraction for domestic tourists visiting Jakarta. The young girl in the turquoise shirt above desperately wanted photos of us (mostly my wife because she has red hair) so we spent about 10 minutes taking photos with the whole family. They then stayed with us while walking around, the young girl asking my wife lots of questions - like what were her hobbies, etc. You can go to the top of the monument, but to do so required standing on a long line, so we decided to skip it - especially considering that there really isn't much to see. We then continued walking around the area on the way to the main mosque, the largest in Asia, only to find it closed - we forgot that it was Friday... Some walking around photos:

Breakfast was included in our hotel price, which is great because this hotel's breakfast buffet was amazing thanks, in large part, to there being a lot of domestic travelers staying there so they had a lot of Indonesian options. They also had sushi, some chinese dim sum type stuff and western stuff (omelettes, yogurt, cheese/meats, etc.) that we didn't partake in. Gulai is like a thin curry using similar ingredients to rendang. with shrimp crackers, green and red sambal. In padang food, these are the primary sambals - called, unimaginatively, sambal ijo (green sambal) and sambal merah (red sambal). Neither one are super spicy, but definitely add a lot of flavor. Colo-colo is a condiment/sambal type from eastern Indonesia and typically served with fish/seafood. The fish was really meaty and nicely cooked. With squid ink crackers. Fantastic pineapple Turmeric jamu - this is supposedly healthy - it's made from (at least) ground turmeric, ginger and lime juice. My wife got some of the chinese dim sum - I don't kow what it was though. Lastly, I got some beef soup with beef balls and some kind of fish ball that is made from both fish/shrimp paste.

Our flight to Jakarta landed on time, around 10:30AM and we breezed through their immigration, thanks to the autogates utilizing facial recognition software and using their E-VOA (electronic visa on arrival). Because it's Jakarta and their horrendous traffic, we probably got to the hotel around 1PM. At this point, we weren't really hungry at all - that Singapore Airlines business class (upgraded using miles) can really stuff you to the gills! - and then eating more in the Singapore Airport and again on the Singapore Airlines flight to Jakarta - so we just took a much needed nap until around 6 or so, the plan being to wake up and get dinner, and then go back to bed, hopefully getting onto Jakarta time as fast as possible, which worked well for the most part. Our hotel is connected to a large mall which has tons of restaurants plus a food court which takes up a whole floor. We decided to go to a well known sate restaurant chain, Sate Khas Senayan (literally sate from Senayan), which serves food from the islands of Java and Bali. More info (including quite an exhaustive menu) here: https://sks.sarirasa.co.id/menu As we were exhausted, we just kept things simple by ordering some sate and a vegetable: Lamb sate - 7 skewers of lamb pieces, with each skewer having a piece of lamb fat, and 3 minced lamb sausage skewers (my favorite), sitting on sweet soy sauce with some chopped shallot and ground chilli sambal. To me, there is little in the world better than a nicely grilled piece of lamb fat with sweet soy sauce and chilli. I'm drooling sitting here thinking about it! Chicken skewers covered in sambal Stir fried kangkong (water spinach) with sambal terasi (shrimp paste, chillies, shallot, garlic) Traditional accompaniment - lontong - rice cakes cooked in banana leaf. All told, about $15 at the current rate of exchange which is about 1USD = 16,200IDR. After this, straight back to the hotel and to bed!!!

The texture of all the ciabatta I've seen here is chewy, especially the crust - great if having it by itself, but not so much as a sandwich delivery vehicle.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of our tour of eating around SE Asia! I am happy to report that, unlike the last several trips in the past, there was only very minimal illness so our enjoyment of some ridiculous foodstuffs was mostly unhindered. We usually try not to go to the same places so close together - we were in Jakarta last year, but we were only there for a couple days and barely scratched the surface. Even this time, with about 5 days there we barely scratched the surface! So, we decided to focus the Jakarta portion of this trip on Nasi Padang, aka Masakan Padang aka Padang food as it is extremely popular in Jakarta right now, even though it originated in the area of Padang, which is the NE part of the island of Sumatra (Jakarta is on the island of Java) - there are estimated to be at least 10,000 padang restaurants in Jakarta right now. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. As usual, our trip begins with Singapore Airlines, traveling from NYC JFK to Singapore, non-stop, the food from which can be found here. I am very happy that the route taken this time was over the North pole as sometimes they travel somewhere over the middle east which would make me a bit nervous nowadays.... our route: Once landing in Singapore, we had a few hours to kill before our flight to Jakarta (by design - there's multiple flights back and forth per day), so what better way to start than chicken rice? Our favorite chicken rice vendor, Wee Nam Kee, had recently opened a branch (open 24 hours!) in the newly renovated Terminal 2 in the airport, located in what's called the Gourmet Garden. A close up of the chicken rice and accoutrements: Even in the airport, their chicken rice is what I consider to be perfect. The chicken is so tender that you can cut it with a plastic spoon and the rice is fragrant with perfect texture. They also have an area where you get as much sauces as you like - chilli sauce, grated ginger and sweet soy sauce. They also have toasted sesame oil but I usually don't add any as I feel there's already enough there. Also included is a portion of chicken soup - which is basically the chicken poaching liquid that is really chickeny and aromatic with green onion, garlic and ginger. Another shot of the Gourmet Garden - there are several restaurants in this area including an old favorite for fried stuff, Old Chang Kee. We got some crab nuggets and prawn nuggets: While in T2, we also stopped by a new attraction, the sunflower garden, located on the roof of the terminal: Next stop, Jakarta!