Ibu Oka @ Ubud

Visiting Bali will not be complete unless you go and eat at warung Ibu Oka in Ubud. It is (probably) the champion of Balinese suckling pig! The place is always full. Foreigners and locals are blending in, sitting side by side, enjoying the meal. It opens at midday and closes around 2 pm, normally serves 2 or 3 large sucking pigs a day.
One set of nasi babi guling consists of spicy lawar (mix of fried grated coconut, chilli padi bits, lard and spices), slices of juicy grilled pork, urutan (balinese sausage), crunchy fried intestine, rice and crispy pork skin (which still has one layer of juicy pork fat). The taste? Can't describe it. You have to try it yerself, mate!
[note: see january 2005 archive]

Nasi Campur Bali

Acting as good tourists, we had our lunch in Warung Made. Don't take it wrong, the food is great. It is one of the famous restaurant in Kuta. There are 2 Warung Made in Kuta, one is in Jalan Pantai Kuta, and the other one is in Jalan Seminyak. Since the place is famous, you can bump with celebrities there. This time we bumped with Dewi Sandra. You can check out its site at www.madeswarung.com.
When you're there try nasi campur. And don't forget to ask sambal matah! Absolutely ssssssh!

Sunset @ Seminyak

One is Ku de Ta. The other one is La Lucciola. Both are fancy restaurant+bar, a chill out place. Both located in beachfront. Both offer a stunning sunset view. Both serve yummy food and drinks.

But we like Ku de Ta better. If you come a bit early, you may still get to lay down on the beach bench. Relax, listening to nice music, enjoying your cocktail, dipping your turkish bread in hummus, watching the sun disappear in the horizon. Great, isn't it? You can check out the place, food & drinks at www.kudeta.net

Now La Lucciola. You need to go a bit further from Ku de Ta. Just follow the road until it ended in Pura. The place is just next to it. Food & drinks are great, but the minus is this place doesn't provide sofa nor beach bed to relax (at least during our visit). Only rattan & wooden chairs.

La Trattoria

La Trattoria is an italian restaurant in Jalan Lesmana (also known as Jalan Oberoi). Some said that the owner also owned Toscana. The pasta is ok. But this octopus salad is definitely a catch. The octopus meat is soft and tender, soaked with olive oil. And price is quite cheap for this kinda food!

Bali

We always like Bali. We love Bali! We love the beaches, the sun, the landscape, its unique culture, the ambience. And of course the food. So, next posting will be about what we ate during our short trip in this beautiful island of gods.

Tahu and Sate

We begin with crispy tofu, simply a fried tofu plus acar and thai sweet chili sauce. The minus point from this is the tofu. Instead of using the tahu, it uses silk tofu... which makes it too soft.

Then satay. As we know that satay in this island is not as good as satay back home. Here the meat is marinated with something sweet, so the satay itself becomes sweet. We try this stall, a Malay satay stall. We hope we find something different. It sells chicken, mutton and beef satay. Hmm... We pick 5 each. Plus the lontong. Amazingly, the size of the lontong is miraculously huge! See it yerself mate! The satay is still sweet... But the lembu satay is quite nice. Next time we will order the beef rather than chicken.

Sambel Goreng Udang + Pete

No further comment needed. Sambel goreng with fat prawns and crunchy pete... What a great dinner! A feast! [duh, enaknya dimakan sama nasi putih yang panas... makannya pake tangan sembari nongkrong. ]

Fancy Food

Couple days ago, me and my lunch-gang went out to Taka. We tried a fancy food restaurant in basement area. Place was crowded, well it was lunch time in Orchad... You expect to see lots of peeps.
What I meant by fancy food is some kind of fusion, mix of east and west, or any kind of mix that the chef can think of. For example: fried spaghetti, which is a fried noodle but with spaghetti. Portion of one meal was quite small and the price was quite reasonable considering the location, this actually giving you excuse to order another meal. Smart! Anyway, I picked bamboo rice with mince pork and salted egg. I thought that it will be placed in bamboo, but it came out in bowl.... The taste was ok, nothing fantastic. Looking at other tables, the noodles looked nice, at least more appealing. The drinks were also fancy, this one is quite weird: coke with ginger. I didn't dare to try. Probably next time.

Bun, roast beef, and exotic juice

Waking up a little bit late today, so we decided to have brunch. But then hunger ruled out the initial idea, so we head out to find lite breakfast to keep us fueled until midday. Bun is suited the need of lite breakfast, we picked up couple of roasted pork bun with siomay and hot tea in Bishan North, our rendezvous place with our buddies. We will get lunch together today.

For lunch, we picked Da Paolo Gastronomia for the occassion. Took some time to decide what to eat. We ended up with pizzas, ciabatta, salads, chilli con carne and medium rare roast beef. But unfortunatelly we were too full for gelato or cakes. Shame. He he!

And in the spirit of trying something new, we browsed around Bunalun, an organic food shop, and tried one bottle of mixed fruit juice. The drink was truly refreshing, giving a nice kick in hot sunny day. But it's price makes it out of our regular drink list!

Mie Kriting & Ronde Jahe

Three bucks of sausage definitely is not fulfiling. So we're looking around. Chinatown in the Saturday afternoon means all stalls are opened. Lots of choices. Lots of good food to try.

We bump on this one stall serving sarawak kuching kolo mee. Dry noodle with prawns, dumplings, char siew and mince pork a la Sarawak. The picture looks good, so we give it a shot. The noodle is yellow, thin and curly. And it tastes good. Nett-nett it is similar with our well known mie kriting Medan, with thinner mee. And there is also a jar of yupo for a treat. Hmm...

Not so far from kolo mee, there is a stall selling dessert. Hot dessert. Dun remember the name of the dessert something about glutinous rice balls, but definitely it is wedang ronde. 4 fillings are offered: with peanut, sesame, red bean and yam. And 3 types of soup: peanut, ginger and green tea. Since not much space left in our stomach, so we stick with the one that we familiar with: peanut rice balls with ginger soup. The rice ball is twice the size of one we usually have in Bandung. But the ginger soup is not that strong and hot. Oh ya, it is called Ah Balling Peanut Soup. Probably next time we try the peanut soup.

Wurst im Chinatown

Here we are at Chinatown, queing for wurst. Wurst in Chinatown? Gotta be kidding! Nope, no kidding. This sausage is specially made for the occasion: it is a Singapore's longest German sausage. Whoa! The length is 88.8m, as high as a 34 storey building, and weighs more than 70kg. After certified (as the longest sausage in this island) it will be grilled and sold as a part of charity.

Picnic @ Holland V

We've been to this place number of times, enjoying the food and loving it. But I haven't put it up in this blog, until now. Da Paolo Gastronomia is shop, not a restaurant. A food shop. A gourmet shop. Just get in, pick any food you want from the counter or chiller.
The big problem is to decide what to eat. Lots variaties! From salads to soups; prawns, squids, bacon, mutton, meat loaf to portabello mushroom. Pizza with wide range of toppings. They also have rice, pastas and ciabatta bread. Cakes, delicious cheese cakes, tiramisu, chocolate mud. Plus gelato for a creamy cold dessert. Whoa!
After decided what to eat, you can bring 'em home or sit down and have a picnic on the wooden table. DaPaolo also has 4 restaurants, but we haven't visited any of them...

Briyani and Fish Head

Today we (with Tio) had Indian food.. It was a last minute decision, coz at first we wanted to have Carl's Jr, but then on the way to Raffles we decided lunching in Banana Leaf Apolo, feasting on the famous curry fish head. So we headed to Little India. The place was quite full, but we still managed to get table. If we came half an hour later, we'll have to queue with hungry stomach. Knowing that the fish head is gonna be big, as big as your palm, on top of that we ordered only one more dish, the chicken tikka. Food was terrific! Chicken was great. We finished the fish except its eyes... (I know one person, a hard core fish eyes eaters, that will shout: 'what a waste!'). The only thing that a bit bothering is the thick curry smell will stay on your fingers for the rest of the day. And the only solution that I can think of is: eat durian... Ha ha!

Chili Crab and Durians

This weekend I've got companies. My buddies from old office were in town. Part of request from my visiting friends was chili crab. So we started with chili crab, mantou, and mayonaise prawn ball. And since my buddy Kris was here, we ordered hot-plate tofu and kangkong blacan. Tio was so into the chili crab, seeing him eating made you appreciate more on how delicious it was. And amazingly Kris was also enjoying the chili crab sauce, eventhough eggs were part of the ingredients (note: Kris doesn't take eggs, meat, seafood and over-cooked veggie).
A good meal is not completed without fruits for dessert, so we headed to Geylang. At the beginning I offered them to order mangos on top of the main fruit: durian. But at the end we didn't order any mango, but ended up with 3 durians. When it comes to durian, not only Tio but the Purwantos also showed high degree of interest. Less than 10 minutes, we finished 2. So we ordered another one. Although they said 3 durians were enough, I believe if we went for another one, it will be finished in matter of seconds...

Jogging: Keeping My Words

Hah! At last I fulfilled my words... this morning I went out jogging in the park.
It was 8 am and park was full with peeps. Some jogged, some walked their dogs, some walked their kids, groups of uncles & aunties did tai chi.
After running about 10 minutes, my lungs started to sore. Man! This is pathetic! Means I need to do it again tommorow... errr... or someday!

Crab and French Beans

During my in-laws visit a week ago, we went out for small gastronomi tour. Inspired by Anthony Bourdain's famous TV series: the Cook's Tour and Emak cooking, we went out to search the famous thung hoon crab (alias kepiting so-un).
After browsing the net for recommended restaurants, we ended up in our usual eating place in AMK. Apparently it is one of the most recommended place for crab dishes.
Thung hoon crab may not look as fenomenal as chilli crab, but the taste is as good as that. To accompany the crab we wanted to order kangkung blacan, but they run out of stock. The auntie recommended us french beans with ikan bilis, which turned out to be wonderful.

3 years old pictures...

When we browsed through our wedding pics, we found this 2 interesting pictures (among bunch of interesting pictures). The first one (on the right) was a pic of our offering bearers. Three years ago they were still madly-in-love-couples. Now 3 years later, they are madly-in-love-parents! Dunno ya, probably being offering bearers somehow enhanced their fertility...

Second pic showed this scene. I believe no further comment needed. The pic explained itself. And I do recall lots of similar scenes involving this (also madly-in-love) pair happened.

Above all, we missed all of you! Cheers mates!

030303

This picture was taken 030303. That day we made a huge step, tying a knot, building a new family. I still remember I didn't sleep well the night before. And had to wake up early in the morning, to drive my mum, her mum and the bride to beauty parlor. Then went back, managed to eat a bowl of instant noodle, then drove back to hotel bringing stuffs that needed for the wedding. Quite a busy day for a groom. When the time was up, I drove my mum to the church...

Can you believe it was 3 years ago?

Cabby Chitchat

When you take a cab alone, sometimes the driver starts a conversation. Normally the topic hovers around weather, traffic jam, or last night football match. But today, I was involed in a bizarre cabby chitchat. At the beginning it was a normal chitchat, talking about traffic... pretty standard. Then the driver started talking about his mistresses and his love affairs. He was in his 40s, I didn't make a guess, he told me himself, part of the prolog of his great story. He was in the army, but then took early retirement. Now except his current wife, he has 2 steady girlfriends. One is a China girl, who is now in Shanghai waiting for him to fly there and spend romantic nights. The other one is his ex-sweetheart, who was married to a gambler, had 2 kids with that guy, then got divorced coz she can't stand his gambling problem, and now secretly seeing her ex-lover, who is my cab driver. Whoa! Suddenly this ride became like Ram Punjabi's sinetron...

Surprise! Then Iguana

Dated back to last Sunday. It was a windy humid Sunday and I was dragging myself to accompany Imel inspecting a room. I was tired and exhausted after spending half day in Airshow, but somehow she managed to arrange the appointment so I can make it. Plus my wifey asked me to escort her to city. So why not kill 2 birds with one stone. To be honest I was not thrilled with the idea on going to Orchad Rd in Sunday evening. It was packed with humans! Actually they set me up! Vesta was in town, and she asked them to bring me to Orchad to surprise me. That's why my wifey was soooooo eager to go to city, and Imel easily changed the schedule. And I didn't even get suspicious! It was a nice surprise. Although I was still tired and my feet were sore.

After haha-hihi we went out for dinner. Vesta wanted Mexican food, so we headed to Iguana. We ordered mini chimicangas, nachos, and grilled chicken fajitas. When the food arrived, she started to take out her camera and taking pictures of the food. Probably for her blog. And I took her picture taking picture. Ha ha! The food was not as good as the last time. Dunno why, but it was a bit tasteless. A bit disappointing. But at least for me, the disappointment was cushioned by a glass of iced cold mango margarita! Ole!