A week in Lombok and Jakarta, Indonesia

[KennethT]

Selamat datang (welcome) to yet another KennethT SE Asian food blog!  This time around is to Lombok (an island in the Indonesian archipelago just east of Bali) and then a few days in Jakarta before heading home.  I'm still a little punchy getting over the jetlag/lack of sleep - I don't know if it's because I'm getting older, or and still slightly sick or what, but it's definitely taking me more time to bounce back than usual - so please bear with any grammar/spelling, etc!

 

Travel time wise, this trip was one of the longest we've had.  Door to door from our apartment to the hotel in Lombok was about 40 hours but the excruciating part was in Jakarta... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

As normal, flying Singapore Airlines to Jakarta (connecting through Singapore) was a pleasure, even in premium economy (there is no standard economy on this flight)...  the food on which is shown starting here.  Our roughly 18 hour flight to Singapore actually landed a little early and we had about 3-1/2 hours in the airport before our flight to Jakarta.  As efficient as Singapore is, this isn't nearly enough time to do anything - I wouldn't even want to try to go through immigration to be able to go to the Jewel which is in the airport, but it was certainly enough time to hang out in the newly renovated Terminal 2 which is amazing!

 

Almost as soon as we left our arrival gate heading toward the transfer area of the terminal, we came upon the Enchanted Garden which is a great collection of orchids and tropical plants, complete with koi pond.

 

The carpet in T2 is made to be an accurate topographical map of the area around Singapore.

 

 

Even though there's certainly no shortage of food on Sing. Airlines (all of which is quite tasty), I was looking forward to our layover as I had read that my favorite Hainanese Chicken Rice place now has a branch in Terminal 2, along with my old friend and fried food purveyor, Old Chang Kee.

 

 

One of the things I love about Wee Nam Kee is that they provide an unlimited amount of chilli sauce and grated ginger as opposed to many places which put a squirt on your plate and off you go.  The chilli sauce/ginger/sesame oil/sweet soy sauce bar is on the left next to the freshly made chickens (the kitchen is behind the wall).  Luckily for us, this branch is actually open 24 hours, so we could get our chicken rice fix at 5:30AM.

 

On the left is their classic chicken rice with breast meat, and on the right is with leg meat.  We usually only get the breast meat, but I was curious about the difference - both white and dark meat were super tender and juicy - succulent would be a good word and the skin of the chicken was silky and gelatinous.  The rice texture was perfect as well - nice to see that the quality doesn't change just because they're in the airport.  Each plate of chicken rice was SGD$8 (about US$6 at the current rate of exchange).

 

We enjoyed eating it in another garden area they called the Gourmet Garden....

 

 

 

A few stalls down from Wee Nam Kee was my sentimental favorite, Old Chang Kee.  It's sentimental to me as it's the first food I ever ate in Asia, on our first trip almost 20 years ago.  Back then, our flight landed early in the AM and after a nap, we started walking around to explore and stumbled into an Old Chang Kee cart on the sidewalk and I couldn't resist getting some crab nuggets while walking around.  So, all these years later....

 

 

Crab nuggets and prawn nuggets.  Both were really crispy and not greasy at all.  About SGD$2 each (about US$1.50).

 

After our feast, right next to the Gourmet Garden was more garden type stuff:

 

complete with indoor waterfalls.  I spent a bit of time studying this as I'm looking to build something similar in my apartment at some point soon (hopefully).  The mosses and tillandsia are both kept in great shape with hidden misters while everything else is hydroponically grown in either horticultural felt or coconut coir.

 

Continuing on towards our departure gate is what they call the Dreamscape which is amazing.

 

The sky is digital and made from photo/video of the sky above the airport.  It compresses 24 hours into about a 30 minute show.  The area has speakers around it playing realistic sounds of the jungle with birds and chirping frogs.

 

In the center is a pond covered in glass which has water plants (like in the front - some papyrus on the right) with lots of fish.  The sky also changes sometimes to seem like you're underwater looking up.

 

 

 

 

[KennethT]

Things started to go (unsurprisingly) south once we got to Jakarta to change planes to connect to Lombok.  Like everything in Jakarta, the airport is gigantic.  Our flight from Singapore landed at their new Terminal 3 which was very pleasant and efficient.  Because we were changing to a local airline, we had to get our bags and go through immigration, then head to Terminal 1.  Immigration here was a breeze.  For Americans, we can either get a Visa On Arrival by standing on line at the airport, or they have a relatively new EVOA which you can do in advance (which we did).  If you do that, you head straight to the automated immigration area where there are about 1000 gates lined up - you scan your passport and look in the camera where the facial recognition software says hello, then off you go - done!  Before noting the rest of our odyssey, I have to mention that a few days before our trip, my wife did something to her ankle - we're not yet sure if it's a sprain, tear or something else....  Getting from Terminal 3 baggage claim to the airport train to take us to Terminal 1 required an eight mile walk (with some moving sidewalks along the way).  Once at Terminal 1 train stop, there is another eight mile walk (or maybe 10 miles?) outside under a covered walkway (with no moving sidewalks) that you do with all your baggage, btw, to get to the departures area.  Outside the departures area is a 100 yard section of hawker stalls selling all manner of food stuffs, then once inside the departures area, a nice, leisurely 30 minute wait on line to check our bags. 

 

Once we (finally) dropped our bags, we went back out to the hawker area to pick up a few snacks we were curious about....

One stall was called Chez Choux - chain in Jakarta - they had a bunch of premade choux pastry which was filled with 1 of 4 fillings at the time of order.  I wanted to get one because they had their seasonal durian flavor available.

 

After filling, they put a sprinkling of powdered sugar on top. 

 

We also got this industrially made snack from the mini-mart a few doors down:

 

 

The durian choux was awesome.  Creamy durian filling in a still light, airy and crispy choux pastry.  I'd be in big trouble if I could get these at home.  The pandan filled croissant was less good - it was completely edible and mildly tasty but I wouldn't be tempted to have it again - but not surprising given the industrial nature of it.

 

Once inside, we wound up taking several mile long laps of Terminal 1 as our flight was delayed a couple hours and they kept moving our gate from one side of the terminal to the other. Repeatedly.  That and the fact that there were no display screens at each gate saying what flight was leaving from there - just 1 display which showed the flight status of all the flights for the next several hours, which was not updated nearly frequently enough as it displayed our flight finalizing boarding while the hard to hear announcements said that it was delayed for 2 hours.

 

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Terminal 1 is seemingly not air conditioned and every seating area surrounds you with people in various stages of having the plague.

 

At the end of it all, we must have walked a few miles - seriously, my phone fitness app said that we walked about 65,000 steps in the Jakarta airport!!!!  I felt really bad for my wife as she sort of limped along.  I compensated by portraying a pack mule and took all the bags.

 

Once we landed in Lombok (around 8PM local time) and took the 70 minute drive to the hotel, we were barely conscious but did order some sate from room service before we passed out.

 

Chicken and beef sate with peanut sambal, lontong (rice cakes) and acar (pickles).  Some sweet soy sauce underneath the sate.  Hilariously, the hotel garnished every plate with some curly parsley!  They must grow it onsite as I've never seen it anywhere in Indonesia... hehe....

[Duvel]

Thank you - please keep it coming 🙏

[rotuts]

@KennethT

 

Fantastic .

 

as @Duvel has suggested

 

thank you.

[TicTac]

Got my popcorn!

 

Love those indoor gardens.  Nothing better than the rain forest! 

 

 

[KennethT]

The original plan was to hang around the hotel the first day, maybe go to a market, then scuba dive for 3 days in the Gili islands that are just off the coast of Lombok, then maybe go see a few waterfalls and get a sense of the rest of the island the day after before heading to Jakarta.

 

Breakfast at the hotel (included in our room rate):

Unfortunately, it wasn't a buffet, but a menu where you could pick and choose - not too many local options - mostly Western options.

 

A poor photo of soto ayam - chicken soup with some sambal - L to R, sweet soy sauce, chopped chilli, sambal terasi (made with shrimp paste).  The hotel restaurant staff were very nice but were reluctant to provide me with sambal or chilli.  I was surprised when it arrived without sambal to begin with, so when I asked for it they looked at me like I was asking a ridiculous question like "can you pour milk in this?"  Also, many times when I would ask stuff in Bahasa (trying to practice in the safe atmosphere of the hotel), many times they didn't understand me - but it turns out it's because many didn't speak Bahasa!  Either they spoke Sasak - which is a local language only used on Lombok, equivalent to Balinese in Bali - or they weren't Indonesian at all.

 

Some of the restaurant workers' English was great, but not all.  For instance, this one server didn't understand if you asked for "2 soft poached eggs" - at that, she pointed to the menu asking if my wife wanted "2 eggs any style" which is how the menu described it.  She obviously didn't understand that "any style" is a qualifier and not in itself the description.  So, she ordered 2 eggs any style and the waitress went back to the kitchen, only to return to ask how she wanted it. The interesting things you see when traveling....

 

Anyway, at least the restaurant had a nice view!

High tide in the morning....

 

Other weird things that morning, we also had some freshly squeezed pineapple juice but were told that they didn't have any sliced pineapple.  We knew the pineapple juice was freshly squeezed because you could hear the juicing machine and when it arrived it had a lot of foam on top with pulp.  Later on we were able to get it though...

 

Anyway, after unpacking a bit, we decided to get a Grab taxi (kind of like Uber) to take us the 25 minutes or so to Ampenan - the closest of the 3 cities which have merged to create the current capital of Lombok, Mataram.  Unfortunately, it completely skipped my mind that it was Friday (a typical day off in Muslim cultures) so the main market was basically closed and a smaller market only had a few of the vendors.  I was looking for a few specific things on this trip - I wanted a cobek/ulekan - a traditional mortar/pestle used in Indonesia/Malaysia/Singapore which is more like a flat dish than a deep  bowl, dried versions of some of the local chillis because I'm not allowed to bring home seeds or fresh chillis due to US rules but I can bring home the dried chillis, even if they contain seeds... also, I had wanted to bring home more fresh kencur (sand ginger) since it is unavailable in the US in fresh or frozen form.

 

Some shots of the smaller market:

On the hunt....

 

We couldn't find any vendors selling mangoes or mangosteen to bring back to our hotel (damn you Friday!) but I did find someone selling kencur:

 

This was the rhizome vendor.  Here, I'm asking her if she had any larger pieces of kencur as all she had upfront were very small ones.  She did have some behind her, and put some in the pot to show me, which I bought.  Then she tried selling me jahe (ginger) and lengkuas (galangal), saying that I need to get all of them.  So I did a mediocre job of explaining that I don't live there but wanted to bring it home and can't get kencur but I can get the others easily so I don't need to buy them.  Unpictured is a woman just off camera to the right who was asking the rhizome seller "how is this white guy speaking Bahasa?"  Thank you DuoLingo!  I was happily surprised how well I did in communicating - usually I find myself tongue tied for at least the first half of the trip.

 

I found another vendor who had some dried "cabe merah besar", literally big red chillies, but I can get those at home (or something similar) so after asking her if she had the ones I was looking for (again to more confounded looks which I always find fun) which she didn't, we left the market.

 

Due to my wife's ankle (and the fact that it was like 100degF outside with no shade anywhere), we didn't want to walk around Ampenan more than we had to.  I had wanted to go to a local restaurant that served Ayam Taliwang - which is a grilled chicken dish that is like the official dish of lombok - but the little we saw of the city showed that most places were closed and it was hard to get a taxi in that area since so few people were out and about.  So when we did finally find another taxi after standing around in the heat for 20 minutes, we decided to just go back to the hotel as we didn't know if we went to a place and found it closed if we'd be able to get another taxi to take us back.

 

More deserted city.....

 

Back at the hotel in time for lunch:

 

A muddled ginger drink

 

Ikan Bakar JK - some type of fish with raw shallot/tomato sambal with stir fried water spinach

 

Ayam kendari - grilled chicken with tamarind and cumin with plecing kangkung - a water spinach salad made from blanched water spinach topped with a fresh chilli sambal - this is a very common side dish to Taliwang in Lombok.

 

The lunch menu:

The prices, for a hotel, aren't that bad - currently about 16,500 IDR to 1 US$, especially considering the view

 

Hidden by haze are the volcanoes of eastern Bali - they'll be visible later on....

Edited Sunday at 01:15 PM by KennethT (log)

[KennethT]

By 5PM, we were exhausted and I had started with a dry cough.  We decided to cancel the next day's diving to give me a chance to rest a bit and hopefully clear whatever I was fighting, and we just got some room service so we could go to bed super early.

 

Cumi sambal kecicang - squid with supposedly torch ginger flower.  Torch ginger flower is a commonly used ingredient all over Malaysia/Indonesia.  I didn't see any evidence of it here, but I was exhausted so who knows.

 

Davil chicken - a Sri Lankan style stir fry - my wife really wanted a stir fry but there that's not common in Indonesia but this looked good on the menu.  Dinner menu with prices:

 

 

[rotuts]

what currency is used on those menu's ?

[KennethT]

The next day I wasn't feeling so great and we neglected to take any photos of breakfast.  I believe I had a mie goreng (fried noodles) and my wife had "2 eggs any style" again.  Pineapple juice but none to eat.

 

We sort of lay around the beach area in the morning which was really relaxing to hear the waves crashing on the rocks at high tide.

 

Lunch at the hotel:

Limeaid - the shot glass is filled with simple syrup to sweeten

 

Ayam sambal terasi - stewed chicken (maybe grilled too?) with shrimp paste/chilli/shallot/etc sambal, with fried tofu and fried tempeh which also came with

 

moringa broth.  Moringa is some kind of small green leaf that is commonly used in broths/soups - it supposedly has immune boosting function.

 

Kerupuk udang - freshly made shrimp chips with sambal.  I had to ask for the sambal but the freshly made shrimp chips were awesome.  We had them at every lunch and dinner.  My wife has a mild shrimp chip addiction.  We forgot to take a picture of what she got for lunch.

 

The view:

That's Gunung Agung - the largest volcano on Bali.  It's usually more visable, but this is the time of year where a lot of farmers burn their fields.  One morning, the smoke was so thick, I thought we should use a mask.

 

Dinner that night:

 

Some type of berry cooler.

 

Ayam taliwang with plecing kangkung - ayam taliwang is grilled chicken - the sauce typically is a mixture of chillies (it's usually very spicy), shallots, kencur, lemongrass and some coconut milk which is applied constantly while grilling.  The hotel version looks more like a sauce that was applied after grilling.  As I said before, plecing is a salad of blanched water spinach and served cold - it's a common accompaniment to taliwang.

 

Local tuna (grilled) with sambal matah - a "raw" sambal typical in Bali consisting of lemongrass, chillies and shallot.

 

Dinner view - this is the beginning of low tide.  Just off the shore, this area has a reef which acts as a barrier to the waves and during low tide creates a large tide pool.  Later at night, locals come here with flashlights - I don't know if they're fishing or looking for something, but we saw it every night.

[KennethT]

12 minutes ago, rotuts said:

what currency is used on those menu's ?

IDR - Indonesian Ringgit - about 16,500IDR to 1 US$

[rotuts]

I thought that was the case .

 

the prices on the menu vary from 85 to 125  

 

Im hoping those are not USDollar figures , and can't be Ringgit   ...

[KennethT]

1 minute ago, rotuts said:

I thought that was the case .

 

the prices on the menu vary from 85 to 125  

 

Im hoping those are not USDollar figures , and can't be Ringgit   ...

It's ringgit - it's common to drop the last 000 from a price, so 85 is 85,000 ringgit or about US$5

[KennethT]

The next morning, I thought I was feeling well enough to go diving, yay!  Just an occasional dry cough but at least I didn't have any congestion.

 

Breakfast:

Sliced pineapple, yay!

 

Soto ayam - weirdly, there was almost no chicken meat - just chicken soup and mostly noodles.  Sambal by request.  My wife had more "2 eggs any style".

 

After breakfast, we were picked up by the dive company, brought to their office about 10 minutes away to check in, sign wavers etc., fitted for equipment, and then we were driven to the "marina" which is really just a beach where a bunch of boats land.  We met their traditional outrigger style boat and headed to the first dive location.

 

 

The first dive was fantastic - we saw white tipped reef sharks, sea anemone with clown fish, moray eels, octopus, a small turtle munching on sea grass, and lion fish (they've become invasive).

 

Afterwards, we headed to Gili Trawangan, the largest of the Gili islands (and a very popular party island), to change tanks and get some lunch.  No cars are allowed on any of the gilis - everything is either foot, bicycle or traditional horse drawn "carriage".  Originally we were supposed to get 90 minutes on Gili T, but it turned out to be more like 60.  In my research, I had found a local Taliwang restaurant around the corner from where our dive boat lands, but on walking around, everything on that block was deserted.

 

 

So, instead, we went back to the main street as time was running out before we had to be back on the boat.  Unfortunately, the tourist place we went to for lunch took a long time to get our food out, so we only had like 10 minutes to eat before getting back to the boat and in the hurry, I neglected to take pictures.  I had a tourist version of Taliwang - similar to that in the hotel, and my wife had a fish/chips.

 

Some shots and video of the main street:

 

 

I don't know how many locals actually live on Gili T - at least in this area, it seems completely devoted to tourists.  But we didn't really have time to explore.

 

The second dive was fantastic too - among other stuff, we saw a HUGE turtle at least 4 feet in diameter, hanging out just out of reach before it cruised off for the surface for a breath of air.  I had been dying to see a large turtle up close like that, so we were really excited.

 

I'd highly recommend diving/snorkeling the Gilis - there's so much reef life around there and the visibility was really good.

 

We got back to the hotel around 3-4PM and shortly later, I started feeling not so well again - more coughing and then some congestion and a low grade fever.  I wonder if all the diving/climbing in and out of the boat/etc. was a little much for me at the time.

 

So, dinner back at the hotel around sunset:

 

Lawar bebek - duck salad with long bean and grated coconut

 

The hotel's version of beef rendang with fried water spinach.  The flavor of the curry was pretty muted but you could tell there were a bunch of dried spices like clove and cinnamon.  Traditionally, rendang's origin is western Sumatra and is what's called a dry curry - it's cooked so long that there's no remaining liquid - we'll see this later on in the trip.

 

More grilled local tuna with sambal matah and of course

 

more shrimp chips....

 

 

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

So, she ordered 2 eggs any style and the waitress went back to the kitchen, only to return to ask how she wanted it. The interesting things you see when traveling....

 

That really did make me laugh out loud, something I rarely do alone at home. Made my day!

 

Moringa is common here. It's called 辣木 (là mù), meaning 'chilli spicy wood' and widely used in TCM as well as in cooking, especially the leaves.

 

 

 

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, KennethT said:

it's common to drop the last 000 from a price

 

Same for Vietnamese đồng, as I'm sure you know.

 

 

[KennethT]

25 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

That really did make me laugh out loud, something I rarely do alone at home. Made my day!

 

Moringa is common here. It's called 辣木 (là mù), meaning 'chilli spicy wood' and widely used in TCM as well as in cooking, especially the leaves.

 

 

 

Yeah, it was pretty funny at the time.  Before she left to go to the kitchen, it was like an Abbott & Costello routine.

 

The moringa leaves in this photo look pretty big.  The ones I saw were really small - about the size of a thumbnail and were really tender - almost mushy.

[liuzhou]

23 minutes ago, KennethT said:

The moringa leaves in this photo look pretty big.  The ones I saw were really small - about the size of a thumbnail and were really tender - almost mushy.

 

The image is from my local delivery app. I suspect those may be dried. The size is difficult to judge without any real scale. I might order some tomorrow just to check (they're very cheap). They also sell them fresh alongside the root (horseradish-like) , the seeds, seedlings and processed capsules for medicinal use. I'll give them a miss.

 

 

Edited Friday at 04:40 PM by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

The next morning, I woke up and my cold or whatever I had fully bloomed - cough, head congestion, low grade fever, etc.  Suffice to say that we canceled what would have been our third day diving and just hung around the hotel again.

 

This was the breakfast menu at the hotel:

The 3 local selections on the bottom left rotated.  I had wanted to try the bubuh bideng - we had something similar (or maybe the same) in Bali and it was quite tasty.

 

 

I also got the waffles with chocolate sauce as I wasn't sure if I'd like the bubuh - I'm not usually a fan of porridge like textures...

I wondered what happened to the fourth quarter of the waffle....  my wife again got "2 eggs any style"

 

Lunch that day:

 

chicken and beef sate with peanut sambal, rice cakes and pickles

 

Kari ayam Lombok - chicken curry made with coconut milk, turmeric, and some red and green chillis (only slightly spicy)

 

sambal and chopped chilli on request

 

Do I have to say what these are by now?

 

[KennethT]

Dinner at the hotel that night - I was curious about their version of bebek betutu - a Balinese dish where duck is covered in herbs and spices and then steamed and/or cooked in an oven for hours....  the hotel's was more like a kind of curry:

 

The duck was tender, served with a "spicy vegetable salad"

 

we also had some limeaids

 

 

and my wife had the tuna with sambal matah again (unpictured but just scroll up).  We probably also got the shrimp chips, but I wasn't so keen on the photography as I still wasn't feeling well.

 

The next morning was supposed to be the day that we would tour the island a bit and maybe see a couple waterfalls that are about 2 hours drive away, but I was still coughing and nose running and we didn't think it would be fair to a driver to be trapped in a car with that!!!  So we stayed in the hotel and just relaxed, willing myself to feel better before we head to Jakarta for a couple days where I had a lot of stuff planned.

 

Breakfast was the waffle with chocolate sauce and 2 eggs any style.

 

Lunch:

 

In keeping with the "trying to get better" - what better than chicken soup?

 

and shrimp chips

my wife had a grilled chicken wrap (you can see it kinda).

 

For dinner, we started with the aromatic beef salad:

I think the slivers were jicama and the dressing was quite sweet.

 

My wife then got the, wait for it....  grilled tuna with sambal matah and I tried

 

sambal goreng udang.  Very tasty.

 

On to Jakarta!!!!!

[blue_dolphin]

Thank you for sharing, @KennethT!  Your hotel looked like a pretty good spot to chill and recover but I know that wasn’t the plan and I've got my fingers crossed that you felt better for the rest of the trip!

[KennethT]

The next morning we had breakfast (pineapple, 2 eggs any style and more waffles with chocolate sauce) and then took off on the 60 minute drive to the airport.  After checking in and going through security, (we had plenty of time) we decided to get some lunch.

 

There were a lot of options - there was a ramen place, like a teriyaki type place but we settled on the local option.  I had ordered the Ayam Taliwang to try to get a different version of it.  The lady at the counter where you ordered warned me that the chicken was very small but it was fine - I wasn't really that hungry and I could always get something else afterwards.

 

Believe it or not, this is a whole chicken!!!  There was very little meat on it but what was there was really tasty.  This version of Taliwang was really spicy which makes sense since the couple of taxi drivers I spoke to about it always mentioned how spicy it was.  It also had a lot of flavor. I really enjoyed it.

 

My wife's stomach was slightly upset, so she opted for some samosas:

She loves anything in samosa form.  I think they were filled with chicken - but didn't taste Indian at all.

 

Of course, as their track record would forecast, our flight to Jakarta was delayed.  Luckily, the terminal area where all the seating was had entertainment:

 

 

He played a mixture of songs, local and stuff I recognized, but I was taken aback when we first walked into the area and I heard he was playing Willie Nelson's "Crazy", which was then stuck in my head for the next 3 hours.

 

Once we finally took off and landed in Jakarta, it took a while for our bags to come through baggage claim - our bags were literally the last ones off the plane... but I guess better late than never.

 

We then waited about 10 minutes for the car that we had arranged and then started the 75 minute car ride to our hotel.  Jakarta is infamous for it's traffic for a reason - in no traffic, the ride could take about a half hour.

 

By the time we arrived at the hotel, checked in and got to our room, it was almost 9PM so we just ordered room service:

 

Mie goreng

 

Assorted gorengan (fried foods).  I think there were a couple of spring rolls, something that had some kind of liquidy center that I'm not sure what it was and then other stuff I didn't know what it was!  But it was tasty and we were exhausted and dying to get to bed.  Transit days are annoying!  I had originally expected we'd be in our hotel room by 5PM, which would have given us plenty of time to go somewhere for dinner... note to self, avoid the budget local airlines if at all possible!  All of their on time records are horrible, but unfortunately, they were practically the only airlines that flew in and out of Lombok at the times we needed.

[KennethT]

Breakfast was included with our hotel in Jakarta which was a good thing because their breakfast buffet was AMAZING!  It seems like the hotel had a lot of domestic travelers so they catered to them - there was also some western stuff available.

 

clockwise starting around 5:00, this is beef skin cooked in coconut milk - soooo tender and gelatinous; sambal merah (red sambal); sambal ijo (green sambal); white rice, puffed beef skin kerupuk (so addictive) and the black thing is a puffed squid ink cracker.

 

This hotel even had mangosteen at their buffet!  This was just to start... I cleaned them out.  Plus some decent dragon fruit.

 

They had a rotating soup station - this was the chicken soup with mung bean starch noodles, daikon radish, sambal, fried shallots and they put some kerupuk (crackers) on top that kind of melted in.

 

Clockwise from the top - more puffed beef skin, rice, fried fish with sweet and sour sauce, and I don't remember what the last thing was - I think it was tempeh balado.  Balado, as we'll get into later, is a specialty of the Padang region of western Sumatra - but Padang food is super popular in Jakarta.

 

My wife also got:

From top left is a style of kerupuk with soy beans and kaffir lime leaves, saomai (like a Chinese shiu mai), some kind of sticky rice packet in banana leaf, and a squid ink cracker.

 

After breakfast, we went down to talk to the hotel staff to get advice of where we could get the various things we were looking for.  Our agenda for Jakarta was mostly shopping related - I had wanted to get fruit for the room - a high priority since we didn't have much in Lombok, I wanted to get a cobek/ulekan which is an Indonesian style mortar/pestle, and I was looking to see if I could find dried versions of the various chillis I had seen that are common in Indonesian food.  For some reason, US customs won't let me bring in a packet of chilli seeds, but I can bring in a package of dried chillies that happen to contain seeds.  The only issue is that Indonesian food doesn't use dried chillis much, so I wasn't sure I'd be able to get that part of the agenda.  The hotel recommended a couple of different markets for the food items - one being a supermarket in the basement of the mall attached to the hotel.  Jakarta has a TON of malls.

 

I usually avoid looking for fruit in supermarkets - usually they're much more expensive than the local market and not as good quality.  This supermarket was amazing - I could live there!!!!

 

Various rhizomes and other stuff... Top left to right: finger root (I wasn't away Indonesian food used it much), kencur (I bought more of that), daun salam (Indonesian bay leaf) and kaffir lime leaves, candlenuts, garlic, and on the bottom was a couple different kinds of turmeric, ginger and galangal.

 

This is a single clove style of garlic I've never seen before.  I believe @liuzhou uses it a lot.

 

Closeup of the fingerroot and kencur.

 

Turmeric

 

Taro

 

Maybe 7 different kinds of mangoes!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frozen durian:

 

 

Selection of chillis:

 

A closeup of some of the varieties:

 

This is what they call Cabe Rawit - which is usually translated as Thai chillies or Bird's eye chillis - but they're much more plump than any I've seen in Thailand or anywhere else.  Some are very short - maybe 1" long if that, others 2-3"

 

What they call Cabe Keriting - which I gather is kind of like a cayenne - medium spicy but a lot of flavor.  This is used a lot in balado dishes and is one of 3 chillies that go into Taliwang.

 

Kecombrang - torch ginger flower

 

Various greens - most of these are hydroponically grown - a lot of kangkung (water spinach).

 

Fresh durian right at the entrance to the supermarket.  We were walking through the mall when all of a sudden I said "someone is selling something with durian around here somewhere".  The supermarket was around the corner and about 100 feet away!

 

We bought the kencur, a whole bunch of amazing mangosteen (that I neglected to take photos of somehow), and a couple of 3 of the mangoes.  We went back to the supermarket to get more mangosteen and mango every day.  Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) they didn't have dried chillies or the cobek.  We tried a few houseware stores looking for the cobek but couldn't find anything.

[KennethT]

After putting away our haul (and taste testing a few mangoes and mangosteen), we spoke to the hotel staff again about possible places for a cobek. They said they'd get back to us by 3PM with more ideas so we decided to go for lunch.  BTW, carving mangoes with a butter knife is a little challenging!!!  We actually brought with us a scuba dive knife that would double as a fruit knife, but the hotel xrayed all the suitcases and made us surrender the knife while we stayed there.  They gave it back to us when we were packing to go home.

 

Ridiculously good mango

 

One dish I had wanted to try was Rawon which originates from East Java.  It's typically called a soup and one of the key ingredients is buah keluak - a nut that comes from Indonesia and Malaysia that is toxic before a lengthy treatment process.  It's very difficult for me to describe the flavor of keluak - it's got an almost deep, fermented flavor (which makes sense since part of the treatment is being buried in ash for 30 days) but is also very savory.  One place that is known for it is called Nasi Gandul Bu Endang. Nasi Gandul translates to "chubby rice" while Bu Endang is the owner - Bu is an honorific like Mrs.

 

Rawon with all the fixins - it comes with white rice, sambal, lime and some mung bean shoots.  They also brought us some fried tempeh - I don't know if everyone got them or if they went with the rawon.  To drink is orange juice on ice.

 

A better idea of the beef, and there were chillies in there as well as the keluak.  I definitely will try to make this soup at home some day.

 

The table setting - in the basket are more puffed beef skin crackers, a dish of chopped chilli and a squeeze bottle with sweet soy sauce.

 

We also got:

Ayam bakar - grilled chicken that came with it's own sambal (different from the one that came with the rawon).

 

When we got back to the hotel, we went to talk to the staff about more ideas to get a cobek, and they presented me with one the size I was looking for!

 

 

They were so nice!!!  The bill for it was like $6 - but it's hand cut stone.  One of the reasons they said they wanted to get it for me is because there are various grades of quality and they wanted to make sure I got the best kind.  Some are cast from concrete, others are milled by a lathe but the best ones are known to be hand made out of a single, solid stone.

[liuzhou]

3 hours ago, KennethT said:

This is a single clove style of garlic I've never seen before.  I believe @liuzhou uses it a lot.

 

I do indeed; in fact almost exclusively. I'm never without it, but then I use a lot of garlic.

 

 

Known as 独蒜 (dú suàn - literally 'alone garlic'), it is, I'm told, native to Yunnan province, but widely grown in Sichuan and elsewhere today. It ís easy to peel and for me one bulb = one clove is (usually) the perfect amount for one dish.

 

It is becoming easy to find in the west, I've heard. I remember @Anna N saying she had found it in Canada and I've seen it in London's Chinatown.

 

P.S. It makes excellent black garlic, too.

 

 

Reserve me a room in that supermarket, too please! Thanks for the detailed account. Fascinating.

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by liuzhou (log)

[blue_dolphin]

13 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

Reserve me a room in that supermarket, too please! Thanks for the detailed account. Fascinating.

 

Ditto what @liuzhou said!  I love visiting markets when I travel - even if they're not as amazing as these. 

 

And how nice that your hotel procured the cobek for you, @KennethT, and explained their quality concerns. I'd say their price was worth it. Lovely piece.