Jayakarta

After such a long day, we relaxed for a bit before heading out to dinner. I'd always seen this restaurant everytime we'd go to Berkeley. Jayakarta is right next to Eastwind Books on University Avenue (the store specializes in Asian and Asian American studies)...

Indonesian food was also a cuisine that we hardly ever see in San Diego. 

Warung Pojok

Last week, Bert and I  had a rare weekend together without TC, who was spending time with her cousins in the OC.  Our goal was to try a different cuisine each and every time we ate during out mini road trip. Last Friday night was a 'no meat' night (Lent). Not familiar with the area, I emailed Elmomonster from the blog Monster Munching for his seafood rec's a few days before. He was kind enough to reply and gave a few good ones but we ended up going here, Warung Pojok:

Check out these past posts on Warung Pojok here and article in the OC Weekly and Yelp reviews. It's in a strip mall in Garden Grove. The name "Warung" in Indonesian means "casual eatery"; "pojok" means "corner". Basically this was a "hole in the wall" but what a great hole in the wall it was!

When we got in there, the place was nearly packed. We were lucky to even get a table. There was a table of customers talking over our heads about their lives (travels to Indonesia, what they did in the service, etc). There were little kids running around. There was a lot of shouting going on. But it was cool.  We loved it. I'd rather have this than a deathly quiet place that will put me to sleep. Their online menu (quite helpful) can be found here; it changes daily!

More of their menu board:

Daily specials:

This photo was taken during a lull. It was actually crowded most of the time during our dinner there.

There was still food left in their steam trays...

Too bad we couldn't eat meat that night...Their beef rendang look really good!

Bert held down our table while I looked over the items and chatted with the lady behind the counter. She was happy to let me know which dishes were vegetarian and/or meatless. This was the two item combo ($5.50) with fried rice with egg. The two items were Ikan Asin (fried salted fish) in the front with Gule Ikan (catfish in curry sauce) in the back. This was for me, but Bert and I shared of course.

Plate 2 was Bert's. At 3 o'clock was the  some sort of Tofu dish with peppers and shrimp. The other item was Tempeh Goreng Cabe Ijo - which is stir fried tempeh in jalapeno chili.  I didn't particularly care for the tofu, but the tempeh wasn't too bad. The sauce, while spicy, had a sweet heat to it.

Close up 1 of the strir fried tempeh:

Close up of  the tofu with peppers and shrimp.

Close up of the catfish - gotta warn you, there are bones in here!!!! But it tasted pretty good and not muddy at all! You know how catfish can taste sometimes....

Close up of the salted dried fish. The woman couldn't name the type of fish this was. All I know was, there were a lot of bones and it was very dry, kind of like a fish jerky. And yes, it was very salty as hell!

I liked how the tables had colorful batik prints on them (underneath the plastic covering):

Oh yeah...fish bones!

They also sold chips in plastic ziplocks. This was the same kind I got at Indo Kitchen in Alhambra. I later found out that this was called "Emping" and made out of melinjo nuts. The man in Indo Kitchen last month didn't know the name of this in English. The woman here warned me that it was bitter, but I told her that I liked bitter!!!

This was the other type of chip we bought. By the way, each bag of chips was$1.00. This was your basic shrimp chip...Kind of like biting and munching on air. I liked the other one better - it was more thin and brittle and had that bitter taste that I love.

We ate the chips with this trio of sauces. From the top was the Indonesian version of bagoong (it was a fermented shrimp paste sauce), down at 5 o'clock was a bland tomato based sauce and at 7 o'clock was our favorite, Sambel Bajak (a sweet and spicy sauce). That last sauce was delicious. I could eat that with anything!

And even though we were planning to have dessert at this place in Irvine, we wanted to try an Indonesian dessert. THis was the Es Kacang Ijo - a mung bean drink on ice with coconut milk and palm sugar. It was kind of wierd for me to eat mung beans in a dessert since I normally think of monggo beans cooked with spinach, shrimp and pork. These mung beans were soft and sweetened by the palm sugar and the creamy coconut milk. The ice was a very nice touch and I can see why people like a lot of shaved ice desserts in the tropics.

Towards the end of our dinner, the woman who helped me earlier was sitting down at a table with some friends. Seems like everyone knew each other here. She asked us how we liked our food. She and I had a nice chat about how similarities with Indonesian and Filipino words. She mentioned that the ice desserts were like 'halo halo'.  I noted that one of their menu items had the word 'bihon' on it (it was a noodle dish), like our 'pancit bihon'.

Another woman said, "Sorry we Indonesians are so loud!" but we felt it was an unnecessary apology because we didn't think it was loud at all. I told her that Filipinos were the same way! Everyone there was pretty nice and friendly. I think we were one of the few non Indonesians there that night.

It was a pretty filling meal with a good price! You can't beat $5.50 for a two item combo. I don't think we could have polished off a three item combo! On to dessert!

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...

.

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

New Moon Round 2 & lunch at Bali Thai

[original post Sat 11/21 but finally posted on 12/2]

So here's round 2 of "New Moon" with a few of my friends. As mentioned in my previous post, never buy tickets online here! The ticket kiosks are inside which sucked because we had to wait until 9:30 am to get them and then my friends had to wait for me and as luck would have it, only 2 out of the 3 kiosks worked. Thus, we ended up getting shitty seats and to make matters worse, the theatre was really puny. We had to sit near the front but not in the front row, thank goodness.

One thing about movies nowadays that is quite annoying is sitting through 20+ minutes of fucking movie trailers. I had to endure some really crappy movie trailers. Most of them were chick flicks. One of them had Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. Two of them had that blond chick from the ABBA movie, "Mamma Mia" (no, I did not watch that!), the pretty girl who co-presented at the Oscars with Robert Pattinson. Now why did I know that? Anyways, Amanda Seyfried is in two movies coming out...Sorry, don't want to see that. But yes, I will watch "Remember Me" starring the aforementioned RPattz...I already read the damn script and sorry people, SPOILER ALERT! He dies at the World Trade Center terrorist attack! What a downer, eh!

Anyhow, this 2nd time there were no screaming teens or tween or Twi-moms. I was able to catch more details with the 2nd viewing. That's how I am. I can watch a movie I like over and over again (not in a row the same day)...I was actually watching to place te songs in the soundtrack to different scenes in the movie. Turns out another blogger already did that and I will post a link to her blog in my next post! I'm really anal like that. I like knowing where songs go in the order of appearance in the movie.

I'm going to have to write more details in round 3 because my brain feels so dead right now so let's just skip to lunch shall we?
Bali Thai is in Mission Valley...located a bit past El Torito's and Benihana's...like you're on your way to TGIF's but we know you'd never want to eat there because their food sucks shit but I only mentioned that so you could picture the location in your head...So yeah, that's where it is. If you hit TGIF's, then you've gone too far.
I chose Bali Thai because it was relatively close by and I thought it might be nice to try Indonesian food again. I hadn't been here since Mother's Day.

The mixed appetizer platter. I kind of regret choosing this. I remember ordering this a few years ago and they had different offerings. I thought it was the same and didn't bother reading the menu. Turns out it had changed for the worse. Everything was pretty much fried. The curly noodle mess you see hid a skewer of two shrimps. There were also egg rolls (blah), fried dumplng things, fried triangular pieces of tofu and although you can't see it in the upper right hand corner, more fried stuff...Boring. Everything tasted the same.

I think my friend (no blog name) chose the Pad Thai. We didn't get anything too spicy because we wanted to enjoy our food and not suffer anything the next day. I thought this was rather pedestrian.

We all chose this as well, the Nasi Goreng - Indonesian style fried rice...with shrimp:

The Thai BBQ Chicken (chosen by Divalicious) - this was pretty good - I had the drummette part...

Chicken Panang Curry (chosen by TORC)

The Beef Rendang (my choice) - Indonesian beef stew with ground candlenuts, spices and coconut milk:

Tomorrow, round 3 of "New Moon" with another friend!

Mother's Day - Bali Thai & D'Lush

[Update - D'Lush is now gone and replaced with Pink Berry Yogurt as of 2011]

This was taken on Mother's Day. Check this out, we were leaving the church parking lot and across the street (at the old Marian High School, now closed) was a dude (or maybe it was a chick, I don't know!) in a full on gorilla suit holding this sign. His/her head is turned so you can't see the gorilla mask. This was so funny. I was reminded of the scene in one of my favorite Eddie Murphy movies, "Trading Places" (a Christmas classic that will endure for decades to come), where the Clarence Beeks character (played by the dude who was the Principal in "Breakfast Club") dressed up in a gorilla suit and later got ass-raped by a real gorilla!
In the past, for Mother's Day, we'd gone to the Panda Inn at Horton Plaza since they have a really nice buffet. I don't even remember where we went last year because that was when I was sick and I didn't feel like going out much. Instead of going where everyone and their mother (ha ha, had to throw that in) was that day, we decided to go to Bali Thai in Mission Valley. It's located on that road that's parallel to the I-8 freeway. You pass the abomination known as Benihana's, and the other shithole known as El Torito's before you reach Bali Thai, which is located in a jumble of business buildings. It's right before you hit TGIF's and the gym. When we drove by Benihana's and El Torito's, we saw the crowds and the lack of parking space. As we drove farther, we were relieved that there was a lot of space to park near Bali Thai. Why? No one was there! And it remained that way for the most part of our lunch, which was sad because we really liked our lunch that day. People missed out man. You can get crappy sushi and chopped up shrimp/beef/chicken and Mexican food anywhere!

This was the menu for the day. It was $19 a person, which was a bargain, compared to some other buffets out there charging $25 or more.

The patio...

We hadn't been here in at least a couple of years. I remember when they opened back in 2004...I really liked their beef rendang and their Thai style fried chicken. They'd changed their decor by adding seat covers...

It's pretty small inside which I like because huge restarants are a big turnoff for me. The area behind the black curtains is a hallway which leads to the kitchens; the bathrooms are further down to your left and yes, they are quite clean and nice.

I think you can get this at Costplus.

Yeah, the place setting. I'm so anal!

Bert's Thai coffee (that's TC's finger):

Since we ordered the Mother's Day special, the starter was Chicken Satay which rested atop a bed of spring greens and was drizzled (Okay, drowned) with peanut sauce. I figured that TC would like this since it is a utensil free food and she likes to eat anything on sticks. I let her eat my share. We ordered two of the specials, intending to share our food with TC since she certainly wasn't going to eat a whole order herself.

So, this was everything you saw on that board...The rice shaped into a cone is colored by turmeric. You can see the chili shrimp at the top, the whole plate encircled by several longass carrot squiggles. Someone had fun with their vegetable garnish peeler! Next to the shrimp was the Balinese fish filet with some sort of sweet sauce - delicious! Below that was the Eggplant Balado, eggplant in a chili sauce. I know I keep writing "chili sauce" (because I love the Time's song, "Chili Sauce" so much, but no...) but it totally wasn't that fierce or hot. Well, it had a kick, but not enough to make you sweat and cry for more like at Sab e Lee or Ba Ren. This was a kinder, more gentler "hot".

You can see the chili shrimp on the left, the krupuk (shrimp chips) that are pressed against the rice, a ramekin of a type of sweet and dark soy sauce with a really complex flavor, and the fried tofu and tempeh becem below the shrimp. I dind't really like the tempeh - it had a gross and thick grainy, oaty mouthfeel. I liked the tofu more because it had a smoother texture, and that's saying a lot because I'm not a tofu fanatic.

Another closeup of the food. This was a really pretty presentation and the food was fantastic. The krupuk was nice and crunchy too. If you've ever seen these unfried, they look like plastic wafer chips or even those plastic things you would color as a kid and bake in the oven (damn, I forgot what those were called!), then when you throw them in hot oil, they puff up and expand almost instantly. I believe that's part of the fish filet you see there. There was also some noodle dish that I didn't really eat. I gave it to TC. She had bits and pieces of our food. She wasn't crazy about some of the spicy stuff but really liked the rice, the fish and the shrimp. I just realized that my pic with the view of the beef rendang isn't here. Maybe it's just as well, because it wasn't as good as I remembered it to be. In fact, the meat, which is supposed to be very tender, was kind of hard, like it hadn't been stewed long enough.

The cook, who hailed from Indonesia (Sumatra I believe) came out to greet us and invite us to their montly gatherings. Apparently, the restaurant does these monthly dinners where she cooks dishes not normally found on their menu. She was pretty happy that we were there (well, I guess since no one else came in!). Our waiter was pretty mellow. He was also from Indoensia but from another city (which I forgot). Here's our dessert, the banana spring rolls with ice cream. Not as pretty as PF Chang's. The banane spring rolls here were actually individual tiny spring rolls, as opposed to a big spring roll cut up in pieces (like at PF Chang's). Cute! The ice cream was not spectacular - just vanilla with a cherry on top. But, nice and simple. Not frou frou at all.

After our relatively stress free lunch, we headed over to Fashion Valley mall so I could do a few exchanges/returns and also window shop. Later, we ended up buying a smoothie from this place:

They seemed to be doing some sort of renovation at the food court. I think Starbucks was gone. I saw a lot of folks with D'Lush Cups. Bert got a Strawberry Mangoyogurt smoothie...

It was pretty good but overpriced of course. But hey, it was Mother's Day right?

Bert and TC were so sweet - they got me a little gagdet that stores and plays digital photos. Bert uploaded a ton of pictures of just me and TC on there, from when she was still a toddler up to the present day. I loved it!