Namaaz Dining Jakarta

Intro: Baby M's First Trip to Indonesia
SFO - Taipei - Jakarta
Jakarta City Tour & Activities
Tatemukai
Namaaz Molecular Gastronomy
Conclusion

For our second date night in Jakarta, my sister recommended Namaaz, which is a molecular gastronomy restaurant.  Having been to Alinea in Chicago, we were excited to try Indonesia's version of molecular gastronomy to see how it compared. All the dishes would be Indonesian cuisine, which would be interesting to me to see how the chef transformed traditional dishes into various forms.

Namaaz takes online prepaid reservations only, and they serve a maximum of 8 people per night. The cost was roughly $100 USD per person.

Namaaz Dining 

There is only one seating per night as they serve everyone at the same time, 7PM sharp. We arrived 15 minutes early and the chef, Andrian Ishak, greeted us at our table. He was very friendly and introduced himself to us and asked whether we had tried molecular gastronomy before. We told him we had been to Alinea before and were looking forward to trying his version. He said he hoped we would enjoy our meal.

Getting excited for dinner

It turned out the chef presented each dish to all the tables personally, which I thought was a nice touch. He started out with this phrase:  "What you see is not what you get."  For each course, he gave us time to taste the food and checked back with us afterwards.

There were a total of 19 courses if I remember correctly, and about half were dessert entree. I won't post all the dishes but will highlight some that was very memorable.

The first course looked like raw sliced meat, not very appetizing. :p  But since he said it's not what it seemed, I braced myself and was surprised to taste something very sweet. It turned out to be dehydrated watermelon which was then rehydrated, and sliced in such a way that it looked like raw meat. The watermelon was served with a traditional Rujak sauce. (Rujak is a popular Indonesian fruit salad).

Watermelon Rujak

The second course was a very interesting take on Mpek Mpek Kapal Selam. The original dish is a fried fish cake & egg, served with noodles, cut cucumbers, and sweet soy vinegar sauce. Namaaz version was a soft custardy egg yolk served with white fish liquid, and cucumber crisp. Very interesting yet tasted very good.

Mpek mpek kapal selam

This dish was Satay with charcoal, and when served truly looked like satay with charcoal. However, the charcoal was actually cassava, and the black chars were actually dried squid ink.  It tasted really great too, very similar to chicken satay, but the chicken here was very very moist.

Chicken Satay and Charcoal

When the chef brought this next dish, I was sure that this was a chicken soup, and wondered why the dish looked so plain. It turns out this was actually fish soup! The actual chicken meat was removed from the bone, and fish fillet was inserted inside the chicken skin. 

This next dish was a unique take on the traditional kembang tahu. Typically this dish includes soft layers of tofu served with sweet gingery sauce. Chef Andrian made the "tofu" look like instant noodles. 

Kembang Tahu "Instant Noodle"

I was so amused when I saw this next dish, which totally looked like a bar of soap! I even thought the towel was edible (turns out it was there just for effect, hehe). So the green soap was actually a white chocolate/mint/butter/biscuit combination that tasted so heavenly. The foam also had a minty flavor to it. I almost wanted to ask for a second serving!! :)

Bar Soap dessert

This next dish totally looked like candle! We were instructed to blow out the flame, and then eat everything including the match. This dish was actually a banana inside with some kind of sweet covering.  The "match" was actually a nut.

Banana "candle"

All in all, we had a very memorable dinner at Namaaz. The dishes were actually quite tasty, and the presentation was very, very clever. It was also very special to me because I could compare the traditional Indonesian dishes to the chef's interpretations.

One interesting thing we noted was that they only served water, no soft drinks or wine/alcohol was available. Probably because the chef wanted us to truly savor the true taste of each dish, though Dan wouldn't have minded a nice glass of wine.

We also inquired about the menu and whether it would change, and he said that they change every "season" which was every 8 months.  Not sure how 8 months constitutes a "season", but ok.

If you happen to be in Jakarta, we recommend checking out Namaaz dining!

Tatemukai Jakarta

Intro: Baby M's First Trip to Indonesia
SFO - Taipei - Jakarta
Jakarta City Tour & Activities
Tatemukai
Namaaz Molecular Gastronomy
Conclusion

We were looking for some possible places for date nights while we're in Indonesia, and I asked my sister who loves good food as much as I do. She recommended 2 places:  Tatemukai Japanese restaurant and Namaaz. We tried both spots on the two Saturdays while we were in Jakarta. They both turned out to be suprisingly amazing!

For our first date night, I called to make reservation at Tatemukai, which was located inside the Grand Indonesia shopping mall. Tatemukai is famous for their Omakase menu, which is a set Chef's special. The Omakase menu cost Rp. 1.7 million (~$150 USD), which is quite pricey even for US standards, but based on my sister's rave reviews, we decided to give it a try. Originally it was just going to be me and Dan, but then my sister and her husband decided to join too, so it ended up being a double date.

The restaurant was very unassuming from the outside. It had a very unique facade. At a glance we couldn't tell where the door was.

The inside of the restaurant was also very simple--a few "stations" each with a chef preparing the dishes. There's also these wooden carved pieces with messages from customers all along the walls. Some of the notes were really funny (i.e: grammatically incorrect) that we wished we had taken pictures of. One that we still remember fondly said: "You're Rock!!" instead of "You Rock!" LOL

Dan at Tatemukai

The owner, Tate-san, was working that day. He served us the first few courses which were a treat!

Tate-san

I can't remember exactly how many courses there were , but it definitely was enough! The first few courses were all Toro, which seemed to be their specialty. The first toro dish was served with diced edamame, which I originally thought was wasabi. The toro was amazingly fresh and soft, and was lightly seared with a hot metal rod. The second dish was toro with foie gras, which was a lethal combination! It was very rich, buttery, and yummy! The foie gras was probably a bit too much for me (definitely for Dan), but was still delicious. The third dish was toro with ebi, which was also very good. The last toro dish was served in soy broth.

Here's our next few dishes. The uni was amazingly fresh. I usually can't do uni because it has a strong smell to me, but this one was very creamy and had no smell. 

The next few dishes were cooked or slightly cooked:  seared salmon sashimi, grilled mackerel, wagyu with broth, and cooked crab with ebi. All dishes were very simple but super delicious. I think the phrase, less is more, really applied here.

Towards the end of the meal we started to get pretty full, but they had one last dish to really fill you up in case you are still not full! It was a ramen dish, which again hit the spot.

For dessert, they served green tea shave ice with red bean. Again, this was a very simple dish but they just executed really really well!

After the meal, Dan and I looked at each other and said that was probably the best Japanese meal we've EVER had anywhere. Granted I've never actually been to Japan, but my brother in law who has been many times and has eaten at some of Tokyo's finest restaurants said that Tatemukai is comparable.

So, if you ever visit Jakarta - I highly recommend trying out this restaurant!

Jakarta City Tour & Activities

Intro: Baby M's First Trip to Indonesia
SFO - Taipei - Jakarta
Jakarta City Tour & Activities
Tatemukai
Namaaz Molecular Gastronomy
Conclusion

Dan's sister and her friend came to visit Jakarta the same time we were there, so I booked them a Jakarta city tour with Gray Line, so they could get a bit of history of Indonesia aside from visiting malls with me. :)

They also did a couple other activities while in Jakarta. Here is Dan's recap:

Jakarta city tour

We started the day headed to Grand Mahakam Hotel where the tour van picked us up around 9AM.  Our first stop was at the National Museum.  We learned about the history and culture of Indonesia and its many islands. Did you know Indonesia comprises over 17,000 islands?

National Museum Jakarta

Our next stop was at Chinatown.  By this time, the rain was coming down pretty hard.  Fortunately, the tour company was prepared and had umbrellas for us to use.  We first went to a Buddhist temple.  It was really smokey, from all the incense burning.

Buddhist Temple

And then we walked through the streets of Chinatown, seeing the various local shops all along the way.  It was so wet and rainy we didn't do much perusing, but it was still neat to see and walk through it.

Chinatown Streets

After Chinatown, we went to Fatahillah Museum which was in old town Batavia.  Batavia was the old city name of Jakarta when it was colonized by the Dutch.  And we could see the Dutch influenced architecture in this area.  We had lunch at Cafe Batavia.  Entrees were priced comparatively high for Indonesia, so we knew were in a touristy spot.

Batavia

After lunch we had a quick tour at a wooden puppet museum (still in old town), and then our final stop was at Sunda Kelapa Harbor.  All we could see were all the big boats at the dock being loaded / unloaded with goods for shipping to other Indonesian islands.  The tour guide said that a days wages at the harbor was about $5 USD.  It's crazy to think how crazy inexpensive labor is in Indonesia.

Sunda Kelapa Harbor

After this last stop, we were dropped off back at the hotel.  It was a long day, about a 5-6 tour including travel time, but I was glad we did it.  I saw a side of Jakarta and Indonesian culture and history beyond the shopping malls, cheap massages, and tasty food.

Cinema

A trip to Jakarta for us wouldn't be complete without a visit to the Premiere cinema which is our most favorite way to watch a movie. We were in Indonesia around Thanksgiving where the Hunger Games Catching Fire movie was playing, so we took an afternoon out to watch the movie in Gandaria City Mall. The price was Rp. 75,000 each (around $7 USD). We've covered our experience before here for details.

Traditional Market

One morning we went to a traditional local Indonesian market with Marcela's mom.  It felt like a mix of Chinatown and a big farmers market under one roof--crowded, smelly, and un-air conditioned.  There were local merchants selling all kinds of local produce, meats, seafood, clothes, household supplies and other merchandise.

Our first stop was a dessert shop selling serabi solo.  It's basically a thin pancake wrapped around a sweet coconut filling.  We got a couple fresh off the stove; they were so hot, we had to wait like 5-10 minutes for them to cool before taking a bite.  It was very soft, creamy, sweet, tasty and deliciously yummy.

We also stopped at a food stall that served noodles.  Marcela's mom bought us an order of the fried noodles (kwetiaw goreng) and "wet" noodles (kwetiaw siram).  Both were good, but I preferred the more unhealthy fried noodles.

Jakarta - Bali on Garuda Airlines

Note: This is a continuation of our Bali trip.  you can find the full trip itinerary here.

Garuda Indonesia is Indonesia's main airline, and probably the nicest. I haven't flown them in a couple of years, so I was interested to see how they had changed.

One of the interesting things at Jakarta's airport is that you can get lounge access by purely having certain credit cards. There are lounges dedicated for frequent flyers or elite status passengers, but there are a ton of other lounges for these credit card customers. In front of these lounges, you'll see a list of 20-30 eligible credit cards that will give you access to that particular lounge.

My parents got us access to one such lounge, while they used their other credit cards to go to another lounge. 

Airline lounge in Jakarta

The lounge was quite busy, which was not surprising because basically anyone who had a local credit card could probably qualify to enter. :)

Garuda Indonesia

When it was time to board, we took the shuttle from the gate to the parked airplane and boarded. The plane seemed rather new, and I was surprised that they had individual touch screens with a decent TV/movie selection. They also gave free headsets which were more robust than the ones that US airlines charge for in economy.

Our flight

Since we were in economy, we didn't have very much legroom, but it was fine for such a short flight. I would say the legroom was similar to most US airlines.

The flight from Jakarta to Bali was only about 1.5 hours, but they still served a meal. I ordered the chicken with rice.

Chicken & Rice

Dan ordered the fish & potatoes, and I actually preferred his food more. But I was a bit too full after Rotiboy and food at the lounge. :p

Fish & Potatoes

Thoughts:

Overall I was quite pleased with Garuda Airlines. Service was friendly and better than I expected, and the plane was almost brand new. It was also nice that they served a meal (even though the food was very mediocre). My parents mentioned that Garuda won the world's best regional airline by Skytrax in 2012. It's definitely a step above all US domestic airlines, and maybe almost comparable to Singapore/Cathay.

Next Post: Le Grande Resort - Bali

Food in Jakarta

Note: This is a continuation of our Bali trip.  you can find the full trip itinerary here.

Jakarta has some really good restaurants. Maybe I'm biased because I grew up there, but in all honesty, there are plenty of good restaurants and good food in general. Here are a couple highlights from our trip.

Fook Yew, Gandaria City Mall

During our trip this time, my youngest sister who is an aspiring foodie told me about this new Chinese restaurant called "Fook Yew". Yup, that's the name. Apparently it does mean something in Chinese. :)

The decor of the restaurant was somewhat modern with colorful mismatched chairs, big catchy posters, and red lanterns.

Dan & I were amused by this particular poster below. Read it for yourself. :)

We liked this place so much we actually went twice during our visit. I'm typically not a big fan of Chinese food, but this particular Chinese cuisine was slightly different. It almost tasted like a Chinese/Thai fusion, with strong and slightly sweetened flavors in some of the dishes.

We tried their Fook Yew fried rice the first time around, and actually preferred it to the salted fish & chicken fried rice that we got the second time. They were both really good, but the Fook Yew fried rice was a bit more unique with its salted egg/corn combination.

Saltes Fish & Chicken Fried Rice

We ordered the crispy salted egg golden corn because we saw other tables order this dish. We later found out why. This dish was probably one of my most favorite innovative dishes I've had in a while. It was basically deep fried corn and rice crispies with salted egg bits. It probably doesn't sound that appetizing but trust me it was wonderful. It was so tasty, crispy, and very flavorful. I enjoyed eating this with a side of jasmine or fried rice.

Crispy Salted Egg Golden Corn

Their other famous dish was the Sheng Jian Bao (Shanghai Pan Fried Bun). They had a couple options for the filling, and we tried the Chicken and Prawn. This dish was almost like a thicker fried version of Xiao Long Bao, with thicker crust. The bottom part was crispy which was really nice.

Chicken and Prawn Sheng Jian Bao (Shanghai Pan Fried Bun)

My sister also recommended ordering the deep fried bean curd. The bean curd was super soft inside this crispy shell, and worked so well with the sweet & tangy sauce. Overall an excellent dish.

Deep Fried Beancurd with Uncle Zheng Sauce

We were really pleased with all the dishes, and will definitely miss this place! The cuisine was not typical Chinese, and I don't think we have anything quite like it here in the Bay Area. I guess we'll have to wait for our next visit to Indonesia.

Maystar, Gandaria City

My mom introduced me to this dessert, and I got hooked. We were actually still quite full after our lunch at Fook Yew, but had some time to kill before we headed out to watch a movie so we stopped by Maystar to get their wonderful coconut pudding!

The coconut pudding was served inside a coconut shell and served cold. The pudding tasted basically like a creamier version of coconut water, but not quite as heavy as coconut milk. It's slightly sweetened, and very refreshing!

Teppanyaki at Shangri-La Hotel

Growing up, my family used to go pretty often to eat teppanyaki at various hotels in Indonesia. Teppanyaki is basically like Hibachi style Japanese restaurants in the US, although I feel that the Asian version is MUCH better.

I wanted to show Dan the teppanyaki that I grew up with, so I took him to lunch at one of our most favorite places, the Shangri-La Hotel. I actually hadn't been there for at least 5-6 years, so I was hoping they still maintained their quality.

We got the mixed combination lunch special which included beef and seafood. The lunch combo included salad and another small appetizer, as well as chawan mushi.

Appetizers

The chef cooked in front of us, and unlike in the US, there was no flashy "show" per se; he was purely cooking.

Dan's first "real" teppanyaki :)

Our first batch of food were some veggies (onions, zucchini, mushroom) and seafood (salmon, shrimp, scallop). Everything was cooked very simply with a little bit of oil, salt and pepper, and tasted great.

Great tasting teppanyaki

After our first serving, the chef went on to cook the fried rice. I don't know what is it about teppanyaki's fried rice, I've always loved it. I see how they cook it, but I never can remake it at home. 

The next serving was the beef and veggies. The beef was cooked perfectly and was really good! I didn't eat much of the veggies at this point since I was too full.

Yummy beef!

The lunch combo also came with dessert, and we chose the fruit plate. The fruit was served with this sweet jelly on top which was interesting but actually worked well with the fruit.

I think the lunch combo was around $20 per person, not bad at all for a great meal!  Dan said he thoroughly enjoyed the meal and that it was better than the typical hibachi restaurants in the US, like Benihana.

Martabak

Martabak is probably my most favorite Indonesia dessert. I got a couple servings during my last trip to Indonesia, and this time I had to get it since Dan had never tried it. Martabak is a thick, buttery pancake with sweet fillings. My favorite flavor is the cheese one, sweetened with condensed milk. It's so good! :)

Martabak Keju

Teh Botol

One of my favorite Indonesian drinks is Teh Botol (translation: Tea in a Bottle). It's Jasmine tea that's sweetened and usually served cold. You can find it at most Indonesian restaurants. Dan thinks that the tea flavor is a bit too strong with a strong after taste, but I disagree. :)

Rotiboy

Years ago when Rotiboy started, there was always a HUGE line for Rotiboy, and people would buy dozens and dozens of these breads to bring home or as gifts for relatives. Now the craze has died down a bit, but I still really like it and always try to get one when I'm home. I got my fix from the Rotiboy counter at the airport terminal. You can probably find Rotiboy at the malls as well.

Rotiboy only sells one type of bread, which is their signature bun. It's a bread with butter filling, topped with crispy, sweet crunchy cover. This covering has a slight coffee/mocha taste. It's best to eat them fresh out of oven. Each bread cost around 85 cents. Not bad, huh?

Next Post: Jakarta - Bali on Garuda Airlines

Best Cinema Experience in Jakarta

Note: This is a continuation of our Bali trip.  you can find the full trip itinerary here.

One of the things that Dan & I try to do whenever we go to Indonesia is to watch a "Premiere" movie at Cinema21 in Jakarta. Cinema21 is the main movie theater company in Indonesia, and a couple years ago they introduced this "Premiere" concept which I liken to a first class ticket for the movies.

Here are some of the main benefits:

• Personalized concierge experience when buying ticket
• Access to the premiere lounge while waiting for your movie to start
• Ability to order food/drink at the lounge, or from your movie theater seats (for a cost)
• Lazy boy reclining seats with blanket
• The whole theater is outfitted for a smaller number of seats (ours only had 30 seats)

We went on a Thursday afternoon, which was somewhat discounted at Rp.60,000 (around $6 USD per seat). The weekend ticket price was Rp. 100,000 (around $10 USD). As a comparison, the regular Cinema21 ticket was Rp. 35,000 for weekday ($3 USD) and Rp. 50,000 for weekend ($5 USD). So the Premiere ticket cost around twice the regular ticket price. We think it's really worth it especially since we don't get these kind of cinemas in the US.

There are a couple different Premiere locations in Jakarta. We chose to go to the one at the Gandaria City mall since it's one of the newer ones. Instead of waiting in line at the regular box office, we went into the premiere area where we bought our tickets from the "concierge" counter below.

Where we bought our premiere ticket

We chose our assigned seats as well as paid for the tickets. We were then instructed to wait at the lounge area until seating for the theater started. There's usually only one or two Premiere movies showing.  We watched The Dark Knight Rises. We would have loved to watch another movie at the Premiere, but almost all locations had the same showing, so we ended up only watching at the Premiere once.

We sat at the lounge, and one of the waiters approached us and asked whether we wanted to eat/drink anything. We just ate a big lunch so only ordered drinks and popcorn.

Premiere Lounge

We bought our tickets only 10 minutes before the movie started, so some of the better seats were already taken. We ended up seating on C5 and C6, which is the middle row, left hand side. I think I would have preferred row A or B in the middle side.

As you can tell, the seats were pretty big, lazy boy style that recline. The seats were in pairs, and there were 6 seats per row and 5 rows in total. So the whole theater only sat 30 people max! Underneath the middle armrest between the seats were draws with the blankets inside.

Our waiter delivered our drink and popcorn order, and we paid in cash just so I didn't have to deal with signing a receipt after the movie started.

This is definitely the best way to watch a movie in Indonesia. :) I would highly recommend trying it out if you can. Another option for a "first class" watching experience is at Blitz's Velvet Suite. See picture below. We tried this once before but actually prefer the lazy boy seating. Blitz Velvet Suite is definitely more designed for couples. It would be awkward to go with a friend or coworker, for example. Also, the seating is made as "beds" so it's hard to find a good position to watch. So that's why we prefer the Premiere instead.

Tips & Recommendations:

• We definitely recommend you trying out these luxury movie theater experience. We both prefer Premiere at Cinema21 compared to Blitz's Velvet Suite, but both are definitely a fun experience and they are not that expensive (compared to US movie ticket prices).
• If you watch during the week, the tickets are 40% cheaper than the weekend, so try to go then if you can.
• We haven't really tried the food at the theater (except for popcorn and drinks), but there are so many other food options in Jakarta that are probably better and cheaper, so I would not recommend a full meal in the theater. Maybe snacks and drinks would be nice since it is cool to watch and eat/drink at the same time. :)  And again food prices aren't too bad (comparing to US movie theaters).
• Try to come a bit earlier so you can choose the best center seats, otherwise you might end up with not so preferred seating.

Next Post: Food in Jakarta