Japanese Style Pasta in Jakarta

Posted November 13th, 2009 in Eat out in Jakarta, Jakarta 2 Comments »

Again, back to my Jakarta trip..  it was my third visit to Jakarta, and I’ve discovered another side of this city.  On my last couple of visits, I’ve seen poor people on the street, dirty toilets, huge traffic jam etc, and I never thought I’d be able to live here.  However, during this trip a friend of my husband took us to a complex of shopping buildings in Jakarta CBD and I had a totally new experience there!  My husband said this place is too fancy (because of many brand shops and expensive stores) but it reminded me of Japan!  

There are three or four of shopping building next to each other, and each building got many shops and restaurants inside, including some Japanese shops such as MUJI.  

The thing which excited me the most was Japanese food there.  When the friend asked us what we wanted to eat, I told him “no Japanese please” because I thought the Japanese food there wouldn’t be so nice.  But, as I explore each floor I found so many nice Japanese restaurants.  In the end, we decided to go to this wafu (Japanese style) pasta restaurant for dinner.

We eat many unique flavor pasta in Japan, and this restaurant had those.  I was happy to have dinner here because pasta is one of my favorite food and I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat this type of food back in Perth.  

Chicken Teriyaki, Squid Ink, Chicken Katsu with Egg Sauce etc…  if I was very hungry I’d wanted to try either sukiyaki pasta or seafood curry soup pasta, but I decided to have scallop & mushroom soup pasta.  Eel & Unagi (Una-Tama) sounded interesting too.  There are also pizzas, teishoku menu as well as entrees such as edamame (branched and salted green bean in pods) and hiya-yakko (chilled tofu).  Friend had squid, prawn and cod roe pasta, and my husband had creamy crab carbonara.  It was delicious.

After dinner we walked around few buildings (apparently this area is safe enough to walk around few metres) for window shopping.  Then, we stopped at a Japanese cafe to have some sweets.  Actually it wasn’t a cafe, it was an Izakaya.  This Izakaya serves Okinawa food, such as mimigaa (dried pig ear), andangii (deep-fried Okinawa sweet), etc.  … shame, we just had dinner! (><)  I didn’t notice there’re a few Japanese business men near our table, and I was talking loudly “hey it’s Okinawa food!”.  I think they heard me, thinking “… a Japanese tourist??”  

We had this honey toast as dessert.  It was really nice, crusty outside, sweet vanilla ice cream and blueberry sauce …  I will try making it at home sometime soon 🙂

Sigh, I wish I could go there everyday to eat these Japanese food like those Japanese business men I saw at the Izakaya..

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