Indo Kitchen

[Yay! - My last post from our last road trip two weeks ago. That Saturday was jam packed with stuff - watching the Percy Jackson movie, lunch at Tibet Nepal House, chocolates from Mignon, a quick jaunt to the Pacific Asia Museum, cruising around Pasadena, checking out City Hall, picking up quick desserts at Vanille in San Marino and finally dinner...]

Wanting to have Indonesian food again, I searched various places in the area, coming up with this:

The last time we were in Alhambra, we met up with the lovely Wandering Chopsticks and had Malayasian at Yazmin (which was pretty close to this place---see my original post here). While youat it, check out WC's post on Indo Kitchen  becauseshe has an exterior shot as well (I wasn't able to get one because their sign wasn't lit up and since it was night time, you couldn't see it anyways) and a hell of a lot more pix of food than our paltry 3 entrees.  Here are a few other posts that reference Indo Kitchen: Elmo Monster and Pleasure Palate. You can see the yelp reviews here as well as Indo Kitchen's official site.

It's a rather small restaurant; very mom and pop'ish, which is what I like. Who needs fancy ass decorations and what not. I just care about the food! When we got there there was a large party of 10 and couple of tables of just two or three people each. We sat near the front window...

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We perused their appetizers but ended up not getting any. Notice most of them are FRIED!

We also checked out their a la carte section where #61 caught our eye:

More of their menu in full color! Having pictures of the food definitely helps! Check out the "sop buntut" (funny because "buntut" in Tagalog means "tail"; I guess there are similarities with the langauge).

As mentioned earlier, we sat near the front window....Look closely....Do you see it?  By the "Closed" placard? It's a "B" rating sign.

Since our daughter was kind of full from lunch earlier, we ordered a small dessert as a treat for her: Es Campur (in their menu as "Ice Campur"). This is crushed ice mixed with jackfruit, grass jelly cubes and palm seed topped with syrup and condensed milk.  The menu also said it contained avocado, but we didn't find any avocado chunks in here. WTF! But, hey, this was really light and refreshing. The syrup was also quite aromatic (not sure what flavor it was) and jackfruit and palm seed are always a good combination.

Bert's iced coffee (standard, eh):

This was the #39 - The Nasi Goreng Ikan Asin - aka Salted Fish Fried rice - which included chicken and salted fish fried rice topped with a fried egg. I saw this on WC's post and Bert immediately wanted to have it. We really liked this - the salty fish with the egg went really well together. Just don't kiss or breath on anyone after eating this!

We also got the #29 - Nasi Ayam Bumbu & Sayur Asum - Seasoned Fried Chicken and Rice - This was marinated deep fried chicken served with steamed rice and tamarind soup (kind of like Filipino sinigang). The fried chicken skin was quite tasty, but one of the pieces tasted kind of overdone (the meat not the skin) and not as moist as I would have liked it. In any case, we picked at this because we were too excited with the salted fish fried rice.

Here is the #61 from the a la carte menu: Kodok Goreng Mentega - Pan Fried Frog Legs "smoothered" (hmmm, that is a typo on their menu, unless that's a new word nobody ever told me about!) with sweet butter sauce. Holy mfkr - that sauce was so good!!! I wanted to drench that sauce over everything! It was sweet and dark and sticky! Mmmmm, coagulation in the arteries......

The frog logs themselves were pretty good - moist and flavorful. And yes, they did kind of taste like "chicken". My daughter even liked the frog legs - We're so lucky we have a kid who will try anything. No dumbed down kid food for her, I tell you! We ended up taking home the salted rice, the fried chicken and the frog legs as leftovers. Shit, the next day, the butter sauce was all hardened and you could see the fat!!!!

This was Bert's plate - like how he arranged the frog bones? The sliced corn on the cob came from the tamarind soup...

The owner let us sample two kinds of chips - he didn't know what the first ones were  when asked (he couldn't seem to come up with the English equivalent),  but the ones on the right were shrimp chips. I liked both of them - the unnamed chip was thinner and crispier. The shrimp chips were thicker and had a more puffed texture. They also had more flavor.

By the way, I think one of the reasons they got a B rating is because you have to walk through their kitchen to get to the bathroom. I felt so intrusive walking through the tiny kitchen! It's kind of wierd walking through where all their food is prepared. Plus, their bathroom was pretty gross. Ugh! Customers shouldn't have to walk through a kitchen to get to the toilet, but with the way it's set up here, you have no choice. So I suggest to you, hold it in and use the bathroom elsewhere