Chetoz — Restaurant in Sydney

The signature dishes were the pempek, a type of fish cake from Palembang. However we soon discovered that they were tiny and overpriced. For $4.50 you get one bite-sized portion fishcake. Although there are many different variations, they use the same base and ending up tasting mostly the same. We also had the sate ayam Padang which was good, but was relatively small and expensive at $16 for only four skewers with lontong. Every other place would serve five skewers, this is a common thing. The only dish that I liked and felt was worth it was the selam besar, a large submarine fish cake served with hokkien and vermicelli noodles and sweet, spicy sauce. We noticed few customers tended to get the pempek but instead ordered main dishes like nasi padang or noodle soups for themselves, maybe because they caught on that the pempek was not worth it and just a hype thing for the first visit.

My biggest gripe is the lack of service and the service charge they demand. There is no counter or waitstaff to take orders. Everything has to be ordered through QR code which directs you to a cluttered and laggy website with horrendous UI. The only staff were cooks in the back kitchen who would also bring out the food. Yet this despite this stripped-down service, they have the gall to charge a service fee and processing fee (no cash accepted) without any apparent service. There is also a tip that you have to manually remove, which is annoying because of how slow the website is. This applies for any subsequent orders made. Even when we wanted to order a single fishcake afterwards for $4.50 they still tacked on the 90c for the 'service charge', and a $2 tip and also a 2% card surcharge. They are already cutting costs by ditching waiters so all these extra fees are mind boggling. One of our plates came with an extra fish cake we didn't order, but not long afterwards one of the staff realised their mistake and took our plate back to 'adjust' it. Talk about being tight arses come on! For more examples of their cost cutting, they use the miniature paper cups meant for hot tea for water, which means you have to refill after every mouthful. The napkins are low quality single ply which break apart with the slightest touch.

The one thing it has going for it however is the ambience. The space is clean, well lit and contemporary, which is in contrast to most Indonesian restaurants in Sydney.

I know Indonesian food is comparatively expensive amongst Southeast Asian foods in Sydney, but this was taking it a stretch too far. Would NOT recommend, unless you're really dying to try out pempek. For reference below I ordered two small dishes and six pempeks, without mains, and...

I had quick lunch here recently and ordered its unique pempek celimpungan soup. The coconut milk based soup is nice, more like laksa soup with coconut milk and spices fragrance. You can enjoy the fish dumpling and rice cake pieces with bits of beef rendang bits as topping as well. Very nice combination and I think you can only find this dish at this place in Sydney, maybe in whole Australia. I also tried their mixed small pempek or fish dumplings to have for dinner and they're OK, but I prefer the cuko vinegar to be bit more sour and spicier. Their vinegar are too sweet instead which is not really authentic Palembang taste in my opinion. Their corn fritter is just nice, but not enough corn bits on it. Add note: the vinegar is much better when you have the dumplings on-site compared to take-away box version. It seems that the restaurant has to compromise the formula for take-away / frozen dumpling version.

The place ambience is quite good since the place is quite spacious and bright. Customer services from staff member are reasonable but sometimes patchy. Prices on the menu are reasonable value for money. You can pay with credit cards (MC/V) with additional surcharge of 2%, which is very high compared to normal standard...

This place sells the best Tahu Isi and Bakwan Jagung aka Corn Fritters. The tofu was so soft, the skin crunchy with traces of Bakwan Jagung, not much fillings inside but it doesn't matter, the tofu themselves were so delicious. The Bakwan Jagung, let's just say they were heavenly delicious. They both $3 each, but more expensive on the weekends because of the surcharge. I tried the Balado Fish as well. Well balanced between the saltiness, spiciness, crunchiness and the fish meat still soft and juicy. Can't say the same for their Nasi Padang though. The rice was a bit too much (as in the ratio between rice and the curry and the other dishes is far from balanced) and very dry, the cassava leaves were only steamed (not cooked with curry), the omelette kinda tasteless and dry too. The beef rendang however wasn't too bad but nothing extraordinary. The Padang Grilled Chicken had generous amount of excellent green sambal, but the chicken itself was nothing special. The staff were extremely friendly, just like every other Indonesian diners. The place was quiet and clean every time...