Indominute — Restaurant in Sydney

Time and energy has clearly been invested into the branding of Indominute. This small Indonesian cafe is a recent addition to the St Peters end of King Street, Newtown. The walls are decorated with framed posters depicting key dishes, like nasi goreng and mie goreng abang abang. A television sits on a continuous loop of well-labelled dishes, making it clear this cafe is as much about communicating culture as it is about selling food.

Named for traditional Indonesian rice packets, the “packets” are mixed plate meals. In the tiniest script I have ever seen on a menu, Mum’s packet deal ($24) includes a tall icy glass of your favourite ade: grapefruit ade ($7.50) made from fresh ruby grapefruit was tart and refreshing. We tried “Packet 1” ($18), which teamed rendang and fried chicken with rice and salad, and “Packet 4” ($18) that included the same beef curry and sambal chicken. While I liked the rich rendang gravy, it hadn’t really penetrated the single piece of meat presented on each plate, so it lacked the tender, dissolving character I associate with this curry. The ayam goreng (fried chicken) was bland, seemingly devoid of any spicing, making ayam balado (sambal chicken) the slightly better bet. Even the tiny pot of requested sambal lacked heat.

I missed the generosity and flavour of similar rice packets at Sydney’s more established Indonesian restaurants, like the ever-popular Medan Ciak. There the (also cheaper) rice plates automatically include fiery sambal, ikan bilis (anchovies), fresh cucumber, peanuts, and egg, while here portion-size stinginess means a sambal egg ($2.50) is a...

I don’t think I have experienced the best of what this Indonesian restaurant has to offer.

I was happy to find this small friendly venue open in the late afternoon mid week a little before the food outlets in Newtown start up for the evening.

I ordered a Sate Padang which consists of beef on skewers with rice cakes, fried onions and a sauce. I underestimated the strength of the hot chilli. It is probably quite normal for such an Indonesian dish.

I think I picked the wrong dish to really assess the quality of their offering. The meat was very fatty. Again I am not sure if this is normal for this dish. The rice cakes were pretty bland.

While there I looked at rolling images of menu offerings displayed on a screen. Some the dishes looked very interesting. Unfortunately I do not have good knowledge of Indonesian cuisine.

So I did not enjoy my early dinner as much as I hoped. Only four stars this time due to the poor quality meat.

Given the very pleasant staff and inviting but simple presentation inside and the range of other dishes I will give this restaurant...

Amazing food, and incredible service. Our family hails from Indonesia, and there aren't many Indonesian cuisine restaurants where we live in Brisbane. Right when you walk in the place has amazing atmosphere, with lots of typical Indonesian snacks and drinks on display and super friendly customer service. We ordered the Beef Rendang, Bakso Abang Abang and the Iga Bakar. The Rendang was amazing with big, tender pieces of beef and good portion size. The pork ribs were incredibly soft and flavourful, and fell right off the bone. And the bakso broth and meatballs had amazing flavour and texture. Everything was served super quickly, and every dish transported us straight back to Indonesia. The owners and chefs were incredibly friendly and happy to chat. If you want amazing Indonesian food made by incredibly friendly people for a good price, this is the only place we've found it. We would happily travel the ten hours for this food any day, cannot recommend it...