If the old don’t go, the new won’t come, so says a Chinese New Year adage. But it does not apply to food. If you are planning an escape to Jakarta, the currently rainy and wet capital of Indonesia, to party and makan with friends there, then here’s two starkly contrasting eateries you may care to pop into there. One is satay, Indonesia’s (though some there may like to think it’s nasi padang and satay) national dish to the world – in a stall that is arguably the best in Jakarta, which means it stands to be the best in Indonesia. The other is a new gen-x eatery by the kids of a local makan maven there. They operate a black noodle café specializing in noodles blackened with squid ink.

Miitem

Address 1-Kemang Food Festival Jl. Kemang Raya no. 19C Jakarta Selatan branch 2-Plaza Indonesia Jl. M.H. Thamrin Kav 28-30 Jakarta Pusat

Opening Hours 11am-1am (Sunday to Thursday) 11am- 2am (Friday & Saturday) branch 10am-10pm daily

Telephone & Email +62-21-7197105 branch +62-21-39838787 infomiitem@gmail.com

Olivia Wongso who set up Miitem (black noodle)

Miitem:
Olivia Wongso and her sister Tia, kids of one of Indonesia’s foremost makan mavens William Wongso, set up Miitem (black noodle) because they simply wanted to set up, all by themselves, a noodle café bar, outside the comfortable shelter and smothering aid of dad William, a very prominent TV food show host, restaurateur and author in Indonesia. A very popular item in one of his menus, squid ink pasta or Mee Hitam was hijacked and turned into the star dish in Olivia’s maiden independent foray into the food business, a fancy coffee, juice, cakes and noodle bar restaurant.

Bold palate: Miitem beef goulash with grated cheese
is very beefy and bold.

Miitem (black noodles) was conceived in 2006 and began as a humble outlet in Kemang, an up-end residential, entertainment and retail enclave not unlike Singapore’s Holland Village area, with a lot of attitude from a pair of very energetic sisters unaware of the pitfalls of running an eatery. The original concept here had the stall looking like a deejay console with a chef, tossing the noodles instead of spinning tunes. It has a DJ console doubling as a cooking station that is a good two feet above the usual ones. Customers can’t see the chef in action nor what they are up to. But make no bones about it, their black pasta come sauced extraordinarily. Besides the usual aglio olio ($5), they do it with fermented prawn (like a mild belachan) and even in light cream. I find their black noodles, served in a friendlier style not redolent of the stiff Italian restaurant versions (in a huge white plate with a lot of parking space around for your MPV), very firm and boldly flavoured (read: saltier), which is fine by the weathered-with-spices Indonesian palate. In that vein, their beef goulash miitem stands out. The savouriness is well received by the overall beefiness, but their best seller is the classic miitem aglio olio. Which meant, when I ordered the fermented prawn version, the chef would be jolted out of his rut and pay more attention making it. And since they had capitalized on the concept of hip and colour in pasta, they also came up with a pink version, which they fry to a near crispiness and serve it over a rojak sauce – imagine pink crispy sang mee over a plate of rojak. Very refreshing yet comfortable. That’s two dishes for two moods, great for when you’re having a bout of split personality.

Blok S Satay
The first time I had the infamous Block S satay was some 12 years ago. I say infamous because then, you had to drive there as it’s best eaten beside this street side push-cart stall and inside your car. You see, in order to eat in comfort, you had to grab your plate of satay the minute it comes off the cha-grill and pull it into your car, wind up the window, so the charge of the oncoming flies will beat a retreat or smash into the glass. But today, because of the popularity of the satay and the collection of kaki limas (five legged push cart food vendors, three, from the cart and two, from the hawker) there, it is now a nice built up hawker centre set with alfresco seats, all built by an ice tea bottler.

The soft pieces of satay chicken with kecap manis is out of this
world with the grilled egg yolk.

Their satay, unlike Singapore’s Malaysian styled Kajang satay, is not heavily marinated and they don’t use minced meat, nor do they order it from food factories (I find a lot of satay hawkers having uncomfortably similar stuff here). They use fresh slices of meat, preferable chicken and stick in pieces of fat and skin. They dunk it in a concoction of kecap manis (sweet soy), soy sauce and oil before they grill it to perfection and serve it on a bed of creamy peanut sauce with a generous sprinkling of fried shallots and lontong (rice cake) cubes. This stall has one very popular version, it comes with a ball of grill hard egg yolk sitting atop each stick of satay. It’s hard to go back to Kajang style satay once you’ve had this version.