Vietopia

My experiences with Vietnamese cuisine are rather shallow and my best ones were certainly a few years back when I made a trip around Vietnam. I'd say the food taste like Thai. Strong in lime, lemon, vinegar and can be spicy sometimes. Definitely my kind of food!!

F.W brought me to this Vietnamese restaurant in Cikini Raya. If you are unfamiliar with the area (just like me) then I assure you that 'Vietopia' will easily passes you by going unnoticed. The restaurant looked gloomy, unkempt and not inviting from the outside. I arrived there around 9 pm and there were only 3 tables occupied on a Sunday night. Maybe it was due to the fact that it is after dinner service peak hour.

Menu : Cha Gio

Price : Rp 26,000++

Score : 6.5 / 10

>> The number one rule : you can never skip spring rolls as your starter in all Vietnamese restaurants and I delightfully obeyed. This is basically a fried spring roll with minced chicken inside. The fillings inside were alright but what made this a delicious dish was the fried skin. It has this gooey slight chewy on the inner side and yet still crispy on the outside of the skin. Yumm - ooh !!!

Menu : Pho Bo

Price : Rp 45,000 ++

Score : 6.5 / 10

>> Pho is a Vietnamese renowned beef noodle soup is served with hand cut rice noodle, generous amount of sliced beef, beef brisket, Vietnamese basil, scallions, coriander, beansprout, lime and chilies to taste. I definitely seasoned my soup very well to adjust my palate. 5 wedge of lime and a few spoonful of cut green chilies. The warmth of the broth definitely warmed my heart.

Menu : Ca Mu Chien Voi Gung

Price : Rp 48,000 ++
Score : 6.5 / 10

>> Resembles 'Gurame Asam Manis' but brought up to a few notch higher. This is a one portion dish of fried grouper served with mushrooms and poured with "Noucmam" sauce. Best eaten with steam white rice. Love the sweet and sour taste!

Menu : Ca Phe Sua Da

Price : Rp 22,000 ++
Score : 6.0 / 10

>> Served in the Vietnamese traditional way of drinking coffee. The coffee potion will slowly drip from the miniature pot on top of the glass filled with sweet condensed milk at the bottom. This might take 10 minutes for all the coffee to be filtered all the way through. You can have this in both hot and iced! Order their 'Ice lemon grass tea' (Rp 15,000) instead if you are extremely thirsty and couldn't wait for 10 minutes.

Total Cost for the meal of two : Rp 180,000 (inclusive tax)

Vietopia

Jl. Cikini Raya No 33, Jakarta Selatan

Phone : 021 - 3915893

Red Velvet Cake

Starbucks - Red Velvet Cake ( Score : 5.5 / 10)

I simply do not understand what is the big deal about 'Red Velvet'. We, Indonesians are a bunch of typical followers. You get a 'hip' hangout place to serve you an attractive looking piece of cake with mediocre taste and an expensive tag and suddenly BOOM ! They're starting a trend on cakes.

Red Velvet is basically a normal sponge cake with butter cream in between the layers. Different bakers do it differently, some uses cream cheese fillings instead of butter cream and instead of biscuit crumbles, some might use sweetened mixed nuts to line the outer most part of the cake. I've seen places starting to be different and alter the food coloring. Instead of red, they opt for blue, a smurf color kind of blue. It's a turn off for me as I felt those food dyes might somehow be harmful to our body.

Oh well, I pray that the next trend or craze that we Indonesians going to have will be at least something that makes your pallet dance. Lastly, just to humor myself I've copied and paste a link that might come in handy to some of you out there who are looking to bake one yourself; food network's red velvet cake recipe collection

Bakmi Orpa (Jln Kopi)

Wonton Soup Rp 30,000 (5 pieces)

Bakmi Orpa (Pork or Chicken) : Rp 25,000

Have you heard about Bakmi Orpa? If you are a Chinese Indonesia living in Jakarta, most probably your parents have eaten here before. Bakmi Orpa is situated on Jalan Kopi and don't judge by it's modest and messy interior of the eatery. The noodles there is damn good! Their home made noodles are silky and has a slight 'bouncy' chew to it. There is a choice between chicken and pork. If you aren't a Muslim then I'll advice you all to try the one with pork, remember to add soya sauce and chili before tucking it. It will elevate the taste !!

To add on, besides the noodle I'm completely in love with their boiled wonton soup. The soup is purposely served bland, all you can taste is the pure chicken stock. Thus remember to season youself with the soya sauce and pepper on the table. The wonton wrapping is simply just magical! It is paper thin, soft and silky! I dislike those restaurants serving wonton with thick wrappings (all you can taste are all the dough in your mouth). In here, you can really taste the meat fillings inside! It usually a bowl of 10 wonton, but you can have it 5 wontons instead; just remember to request on it.

Don't order ice tea when you are in here, remember to try their "ice coffee". It is strong and sweet at the same time. They brew their fresh coffee on site and with the correct proportion of condensed milk, this is simply heavenly good !! Besides their noodle and wonton, they have wonderful selections of small dishes like; bola ubi, siomay, bakso goreng, etc. All of them are delicious, trust me!!!

Last but not least, I'd just want to let all of you know that even though this is a modest eatery, the price tag isn't modest at all. They do charge the eaters with quite a bill. But life is too short to eat bad food isn't it?

Old Town White Coffee

Emporium Pluit Mall has a newcomer; Old Town White Coffee. It claim to have overseas branches in Malaysia but it was my first time seeing it. Even though it was in the middle of the afternoon (around 4pm) the crowd there was quite a handful with mostly old age people hanging out drinking coffee. Nevertheless, I decided to have a try.

Menu : Curry Potato with Thick Toast

Price : Rp 22,000 ++

Score : 7.0 / 10

>> I enjoyed it! I like the fact that the curry wasn't too strong and all of the spices and herbs at the right amount. The potatoes were soft and the thick toast was a perfect combination to dip into the gravy. 

Menu : Old Town Hot White Coffee

Price : Rp 15,000 ++

Score : 6.0 / 10

>> Definitely better than your supermarket instant coffee mix hahaha! This coffee is suitable for those who do not like strong black coffee. The proportion of milk is definitely more than the espresso. However, I'm more of a 'frappuccino' type of gal !

Menu : Old Town Ipoh Chicken Hor Fun

Price : Rp 28,000 ++
Score : 5.0 / 10

>> I don't really like this dish because of two critical factors. It has too little fillings (besides the obvious noodle) and the chicken broth / soup was slightly on the bland side. Thus bottom line, I wouldn't advice all of you blog walkers to try this. Pass on this one!

Yummy Sydney Part 4

Alright this is the fourth part of the mini series, hahaha and yes I know it's getting a little bit too long? I'll try to speed this one up alright!

LINDT CAFE

Glorious sweet treats! I love this cafe! Melbourne doesn't have this cafe and thus when I was in Sydney, I made sure I pop myself here. I had 70% dark chocolate ice cream and a piece of hazelnut cake. Both were really really yummy. I wanted to eat more but the timing was not right. It was close to dinner time and have to save some room for my tummy.

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN (KFC)

KFC wicked wings brings back a great deal of memories in my Melbourne days. My friends and I ate a lot of wicked wings back then, we can order something like 100 piece to share among 6 - 8 people at any one time. KFC in Jakarta doesn't offer this menu and thus when I was in Sydney I grabbed the opportunity to have 10 piece of wicked wings!!!

KOREE BBQ

I lost track of how many times I ate Korean in Sydney but this serves one of the best Ramen I had ever eaten. I love the Ramen Soup a lot !!! I'm not too sure about the Beef Galbi, because I felt the meat was too chewy and salty.

STREET FOOD

Snacks, snacks, snacks! I love to snack big time and so here some of the food I ate during my 'free time' hahaha! Let me tell you, I think I gained some weight upon my last day in Sydney!