AYCE Sari Belido - Jakarta, Indonesia
My brother found this restaurant or more like stumbling upon it on IG. 😅 He thought it was interesting so brought up the idea to me. I thought why not. Even though at the time me and hubby were in Jambi which actually has plenty of pempek. Sari Belido is a restaurant that serves cuisine from Palembang, an area in southern part of Sumatra Island.
All You Can Eat (AYCE) option of Sari Belido happened on the second floor of the restaurant in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta. Patrons who are interested in the AYCE option will be helped at a special counter by the entrance. After paying, customers would receive a paper wristlet identifying them as paying customer. We were then allowed to go up the stairs. A host upstairs greeted us and took our payment receipt then showed us to our table. Each paying customer is allotted 90 minutes time. 😋
Most people only know pempek as a dish from the South Sumatra region. But at Sari Belido we were introduced to celimpungan and laksan. Celimpungan is a traditional Indonesian food that originated in South Sumatra. It's made from sago, fish dough, and empek-empek, and the soup is made from coconut milk. While laksan which also sounded similar in term of ingredients which are fish paste and tapioca but laksan is shaped like a square log.
This is where I think for people like me who has never tried either celimpungan or laksan would be better of going to a regular restaurant where the dish would be served properly. On my beginner's hand, both celimpungan and laksan tasted very similar. Only later on I found out that I should have used chopped celery leaves on laksan. Otherwise if you look at my picture, those two dishes looked pretty similar.
The pempek were pretty decent. The vinegar sauce was available on the table in spicy and non spicy option. Mie celor was another dish that I just came to know pretty recent as well. The version I had here in my opinion was better than whatever I had before. The broth for the mie celor here wasn't very gooey and actually tasted like it had dried shrimp which gave it an umami flavor.
The disappointing one was the otak-otak. I'm not sure whether the version served for the AYCE customers is the same as the one sold for the regular customers. Because the AYCE version is pretty lame. No fish flavor and even the peanut sauce was just as lame. 😞
I was expecting to try the pindang fish but the only pindang was the pindang fish. Not sure if that was only that day or fish pindang was too pricey to be put on AYCE.
As this AYCE option was pretty new, when we called to book, full payment was expected. Not sure if that policy would change in the future.
Comments
Post a Comment