Ilustrasi  

BERITA TERKAIT

• Gado-Gado Triguna

Jl. Kebon Sirih 77-79
Jakarta Pusat
Tel. 391 8690

Here’s the latest restaurant-as-potted-lesson-in-history offering from the Tugu Group — a shrine to a warong of the same name in Sunda Kelapa, of said year, and to the Betawi woman who had for “all her life” dedicated herself to Betawi and Babah (cross-cultural fusion between Chinese and Indonesian archipelagic) cuisines. The original warong was supposed to have been the brainchild of this woman — Mpok Siti Zaenab — and her Babah husband, whose ancestry went all the way to Shanghai. Or so the story goes.

As with the group’s similar establishments, the place carries the full weight of its narrative: the main dining room is a resplendent temple of Shanghai Art Deco, and for all its in-your-face clutter, it is still pretty damn stunning — the details of it, I mean, the lovingly framed newspaper clippings and 20’s comic book pages, photos of barber stools, opium pipes and sewing machines, and prissy red lanterns over lavishly decorative wooden tables. Samarra next door is just as fulsome, if not wholly magnificent — it is not a restaurant, it is a movie set.

But the real star turns out to be the food, which is quite ironic, because the received wisdom is that if the Tugu group has an underperformer, this is it (hard to think why). For a start: there is the kuo tie tiga macam — pan fried dumplings three ways, and here it means beef, chicken and vegetables — which are triply sleek but substantial, with two very nice dipping sauces. There is also the crisp fried crabmeat balls stuffed with lychees, laced with mint curry. The mint curry is delicious, in a subtle but full-flavoured way; more would have been nice. It’s starters like this which sets the tone and perhaps makes up for subsequent little flaws; the sop ikan warong 1920, touted as the house fish soup, is clear and redolent with the aroma of coriander — though not to the gunwales, as it perhaps should. But it is lovely all the same, rather like a brief soupy respite, paving the way for some pleasant surprises as salted eggplant, fried in batter ever so lightly, coated with crispy shrimp (sensational); squid fried in salted eggs and spicy sweet and sour sauce (slightly rubbery squid but great savoury crunch) and great, garlicky fried noodles (of sweetish, Javanese-influenced persuasion).

Not everything is swell: the eight vegetable dish — bitter melon, black cloud mushroom, shitake mushroom, champignons, green peas, bean sprouts, tofu, bamboo shoots and baby corn; we counted!—is corn flour-heavy and thus unremarkable. A dish of mixed vegetables only ever makes sense sautéed in garlic, tossed in fish sauce and oyster sauce, or licked with sambal, if you ask me. The ikan dan kerang batik turns out to be steamed fish and clams, and has the tang and body of a runny vongole sauce sans the pasta — this too is less successful, like an unfinished song. The ayam masak merah, despite the meaty tenderness you can only find in the best of smoked ducks, turns out not to be a thick sweetish sambal paste Nonya version you have come to expect of the word merah, but a sort of watered down gravy. Yet these are minor quibbles, mind, especially if you’re having an iced drink so knock-off-your-socks terrific like the es surga ke tujuh—literally, the seventh heaven—throughout. Longans, ginkgo nuts, lotus seeds, Chinese snow mushroom in longan syrup: very restrained, ambrosia itself.

Given the sweeping odes to Art Deco as the most glamorous style of the twentieth century, altering, as the house version of history claims, the skylines of cities from Shanghai to Rio, and adding an exotic vibrant edge to everything from cinema and fashion to ocean liners and automobiles, I don’t know whether it’s all a little anti-climactic — to be content, in the end, with something so seemingly mundane as good food and good friends, and to be breezily unperturbed by all the exotica.

Price range: Around Rp 600,000 for 3  
Operating hours: 11:00 – 24:00
Dress code: smart casual
Atmosphere: sumptuous Art Deco
Alcohol: yes + wine list
All major credit cards accepted
Reviewed: November 2007