Ninas Kitchen PIK — Restaurant in Jakarta

Nina's Kitchen Rukan Golf Island PIK North Jakarta March 2021

Rendang babi for 30 K IDR

Was a bit disheartened to find the rendang babi as underwhelming as it was - i was really hoping to get some good pork, but this rendition clearly failed both as a rendang as well as a pork dish. They really should have cooked it for longer to make it soft and i seriously think they need to revamp the spices in this recipe as to make it more palatable.

That being said, i guess overall 151 K for two people with drinks was still quite okay. For instance, i find the 12 K daun pepaya cah tempe was quite okay. Their 10 K jengkol semur was also very well priced - albeit also being an underwhelming version of semur, at least the jengkol was soft and properly prepared and they only needed to cook it a bit longer to really thicken the semur. Subsequently, their 10 K price tag for each of the nasi merah and nasi uduk is just "meh, fair enough", and i guess the same can be said for their 10 K perkedel. We also had a 25 K pork satay with peanut sauce which was quite okay but nothing really to write home about.

That being said, their 18 K ayam suwir kecombrang was clearly a great steal - it was just right in terms of flavour and texture. Eventhough i would also say they should just be brave and spice things up a bit more, i can totally understand why they toned it down for this dish and i applaud the fact that they still did it justice as they did not make it meh as compared to most other renditions of toned down dishes aimed for a wider palate. If there was ever a reason to return here, this dish would be it.

As for the drinks, i guess the 11 K unsweetened ice tea is par for the course considering the ambience and location. But the thickness and freshness of their homemade 350 ml green bean juice really made my day.

Overall imho this is a bit too far for a second visit, but it was a good option for a nice place to sit with decent enough prices considering its locale.

So if you're ever in the area hankering for some well made indonesian dishes in a cafe setting, do go for the green bean juice and kecombrang chicken!

#indonesian #food...

30 Nov 2024

Heard this place is one of the most expensive foods for this type of restaurant (warteg).

They have fixed menu like rice with chicken and seafood and a vegetable.

They are not flexible at all. For example, if we order the chicken and it comes with 3 pieces of chicken, but we can't mix different type of chicken cause I think they have 3 or 4 type of chicken.

They have 2 dishes of little squid, requested give me a little of each but rejected. They will give you a spoon full of whatever squid you choose, no mixing.

And you can see that they have a lot of food there. How can we try it all if we can't request just a little of each food. Like the chicken, 1 order comes with 3 pieces. If they can give us 1 piece of each type of cooking, then we had tried 3 types of chicken 😁

We are not asking for more, but just different types of cooking only so we could try more of their food.

Hopefully, they could consider being more flexible...

One of the special eating places I truly like. Friends I brought here thought alike. If you eat everything, then you'll find every dish here tastes good. Not only the taste, but also the look; it's obvious that the cook behind this is someone who loves & appreciates foods. A simple example is the eggplants they still bore that beautiful purplish colour! Same ideas with the other veggie dishes... the green, yellow, orange... it makes 'eat your colours' so fun & enjoyable! Besides the dishes, I'm also very much in love with the mung bean drink plus the chiffon cake - both triple cheese & pandan variants. I know when real pandan is used; this is definitely one of such.

Try it yourself & find the richness in food language! 😉

*atmosphere it feels clean & tidy; although the sound could be a bit noisy from the reverberation (it must have something to do with the...