The Clandestine Critic | East and More-iental
Our expert epicure continues an undercover operation to bring you the truth about Jakarta’s dining scene. No spoon is left unturned in the quest for honest, balanced reviews, from long-established favourites to the hottest new tables in town.
This month, the inexorably exotic E&O.
What’s in a name? That which we call a restaurant should, by any other name, taste as good. What, then, does globe-trotting boy wonder Will Meyrick’s appellation do for his Jakarta gaff, E&O? Regular readers will know I recently reviewed another of the Union Group’s Jakarta joints, Loewy, and it fared about as well as Juliet. Time to see whether their collaboration with the Street Food Chef lives up to the lasting popularity of his Bali efforts (Mamasan and Sarong).
On the subject of names, ‘Eastern and Oriental’ is that of a hotel established in Penang in the 1880s: thus are we instantly transported to the golden age of travel – a time when Noel Coward wasn’t a hipster cocktail name but an artist on a tropical sojourn. I should think the original E&O probably had comfier chairs than this restaurant. But anyway, eventually it became part of a chain in which sister hotels included the fabled Raffles Singapore. So far, so Southeast Asian.
This is where Meyrick comes in. A wee Scottish scamp, he travailed in a few London kitchens before skipping off on a jaunt around the world, munching his way through Indochina. He settled for a spell in Sydney where he found favour with a few mostly Thai restaurants, before deciding more permanently on Indonesia. E&O’s menu has gone through a couple of guises since its 2013 opening: the website currently proclaims Thai-Vietnamese, but there’s more to it than that.
An important dish to get right if you’re doing Thai is som tum. This green mango salad (Rp.50,000) should be sour, spicy, salty and sweet – the balance of these elements is everything in Thai (and Vietnamese) cooking. I could have done with a little more spice, but this wasn’t a major issue. The mango was suitably soft, and every key ingredient was present, from peanuts to dried shrimp.
The Massaman Lamb Curry (Rp.180,000) was a triumph. This is a lesser-known Southern Thai classic usually favoured by Muslim communities, starring flavours more readily found in subcontinental dishes: cinnamon, tamarind and cardamom, in this version. The lamb shanks were big and beautifully braised, lovingly enveloped by the stewed-down pumpkin in the rich, robust sauce. I could have eaten this for days: a thing of delight, and easily one of the best curries I’ve had in Jakarta.
To go with this, a side order of roti canai (Rp.45,000) is to be encouraged. This one was perhaps a tad undercooked, but the flakiness was good and you can’t beat it for mopping up Massaman sauce.
For our other main we strayed from the Thai-Vietnamese canon to Balinese Pepes (Rp.150,000), a firm, dense barramundi fillet marinated and steamed in banana leaves. You could pick out the appropriate bumbu in the dish: candlenut, daun, lemongrass in the sambal matah, etc – again, we could have coped with a little more spice (and this along with the som tum are supposed to be the menu’s spiciest choices) but the flavours were lively on the palate. Have this with simple jasmine rice (Rp.15,000).
Peanut Butter Palm Sugar Ice Cream (Rp.50,000) was like a sexed-up, adult-sized Reese’s cup: topped with chocolate and homemade honeycomb pieces, it was a naughty plus-sized joy.
Shame-eat the lot and torture yourself in the gym later. The Mocha Cappuccino Ganache (Rp.65,000) also came with a big slab of honeycomb; the creamy coconut ice cream topped with coffee granita was the best bit.
To go with your repast at E&O, it’s surely got to be a selection from their extremely well-stocked bar. They do some of the best cocktails in town: creative and unusual, and not just for the sake of it, but because it actually tastes good. Go classic with a Hemingway Daquiri, or ‘Signature’ with a lychee Lady Butterfly. Wine-wise, you need off-dry with the spice – maybe a Trimbach Riesling. I cannot however, for the life of me, understand the beer menu. Heineken and Erdinger, really?! Decent enough beers – but is that the best they can do in an eastern-themed restaurant? Where’s the Singha, or the Bia Ha Noi? Even Bintang would have been welcome.
Though not quite at Ramsay-esque levels of celeb-chefdom, clearly Meyrick is not able to cook here daily (he’s got gallivanting to do, you understand). But on the day we visited, the kitchen mostly pulled it off. Service is marginally better than the usual brand of slightly useless, and the food is great value for money. All in all? Pleasing to see Meyrick’s name is not just there as a crowd-magnet, but that it does in fact equate to the best option for upmarket Thai and pan-Southeast Asian in the city.
The menu does section itself though, into helpful if somewhat alarmingly-titled groups: Raw, Fins & Shells, and the vegetarian’s nightmare, Two Legs and Four Legs. We ordered several dishes at once, adding a few bits as we went along. As befits Indonesia, everything came when it was good and ready. This resulted in slightly discombobulated sequencing: for example, our side of Tapioca Fries (Rp.35,000, with Basa Gede ‘espuma’ – a chef-y word for foam) came pretty much first. In a relaxed establishment such as Spice, this isn’t a huge problem. Incidentally, this order turned out to be superfluous, since the same wedges accompanied our Steak Sliders (Rp.95,000). The meat on the mini-burgers was ever so slightly chewy, but the bread was good and the flavours worked with the sambal hijau. The fries pretty much did what they said on the tin, and were quite filling. The basa gede (Balinese spice mix) foam was intended for dipping and packed a punch.
Snapper Carpaccio (Rp.95,000) featured tamarind croutons and a rujak dressing of shrimp paste, palm sugar and chilli. It was refreshing, as rujak should be, and the fish, fresh and tasty. Strangely enough though, the deceptively simple Quinoa and Tomato Salad (Rp.60,000) managed to outshine it, with its tangy Suna Cekuh (garlic and ginger) dressing.
For dessert, unfortunately I was not bowled over by the somewhat unremarkable Chocolate Cake (Rp.55,000), although its accompanying jackfruit ice cream was great, and much more like the Salans I know. Better still was the Kalamansi lime sorbet (Rp.45,000). This unique, tangerine-y citrus fruit is having a bit of a moment on menus across Bali – it’s popping up everywhere, including in our Kalamansi Margarita (Rp.85,000), which was pretty good, as was the Kemangi Gin & Tonic (Rp.85,000). The cocktails could benefit from a little finesse, though I would thoroughly understand if they chose not to refine them – this is, after all, an all-day place, with milkshakes and suchlike on offer in the evenings. I rarely get to say this but you might actually be better going for wines by the glass: I was thrilled to find one of my favourites, Verdejo (a white from Spain), which was super.
What are your favourite foods this week?
Joseph Abud, Executive Chef, and his team have created a menu of their favourite European dishes alongside Asian classics. Joseph encourages their guests to ask for any tweaks that they desire to perfect the food to the individual palate. We started off with the Caesar salad and Commune Vegetable Soup. The Caesar salad had crisp romaine lettuce and all the trimmings but an unfamiliar bite. Puzzled I asked Joseph what this spice was, that clearly was not from chillies, pepper nor mustard. Joseph revealed his secret; an extra helping of Worcestershire sauce. A fine option for us spice addicts. The Commune Vegetable soup came with egg which seemed a bit odd to me but agreed with my taste buds, akin to vegetarian chili con carne. I must rave about the Algreco Pasta. The pasta gains inspiration from a Greek salad; spaghetti tossed in olive oil, feta cheese, olives and red onion with a wonderful fried fillet of dory. Dian, my partner in crime for this review turned to me, smiled and simply chirped “Tasty!” after she took her first bite of the dory fillet. The Anza pizza is available in pork or beef sausage and had a sour-doughesque base which as a part Finn, I appreciated. The Meatball sub had tangy spicy meatballs mellowed and mingling well with the sweeter tomato sauce. The Buttered Salmon had a coral sauce coloured by roasted red peppers. By now, dessert was not a stretch my stomach could handle but recommended deserts include the ever popular Red Velvet and rainbow coloured Hummingbird.
Alberto Remondi was born in Italy in 1963, and grew up in the family home in Rome, one of the world’s most beautiful cities. He started living independently at age 18 when he and a friend moved into their own apartment. By age 28, he had visited almost the whole of Europe – England, France, Austria, Germany, Holland, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, as well as making three trips to Australia. After taking up residence in Bali in 1996, Alberto worked in Lombok and Bali at Novotel Hotel, Nusa Dua Beach Hotel, the Hilton and several other four or five-star hotels as an agent for a well-known Italian tour operator. From 2002 to 2006 he worked for the clothing company Animale, then managed seven restaurants for the Lotus Enterprises Group. In 2009, Alberto started his own business, Alfred Pasta, the only commercial homemade pasta producers on Bali.
Why the name “Alfred Pasta”? 
Is it practical to make good pasta in the home kitchen?