Silk Bistro — Restaurant in Jakarta

It was alright…

From the moment I tried booking, I was met with difficulties. It gives off “a new restaurant trying to be fully booked” vibe. I WA’ed to book, but since there were no replies, I called instead. At first they told me that they are fully booked for the night. I had asked them if they were sure 100% of all the customers have guaranteed their booking and if walk in was available, and they said it’s better for them to reserve a table for me (pretty odd conversation, I feel). but okay, they booked me a table by the kitchen. I just felt like the hosts were not agile enough to provide solutions. What was not possible, became possible in a matter of seconds. Very, very strange.

When I arrived, of course there were many, many empty tables. My friend and I ordered 2 mains (steak frites & unagi dry ramen), 1 appetizer (salt & pepper calamari) and a bottle of wine to share. I had asked the server for recommendations of which type of beef would be best for the steak frites, she immediately recommended the Hokkaido Snow Beef (which was 650rb/100grams), and when I asked why, she could not explain why nor sell it to me. Do the servers not know why and what they’re selling? Are they merely selling it because of the price?

I had asked to switch servers after. The food was okay… Calamari is a bit too salty and has a lot of MSG. The menu was a bit all over the place, it’s hard to find a nice combination of flavors. They have steak, dimsum, asian noodles, asian salads, claypot rice… Very eclectic.

They had a good selection of natural wines, which deserves the spotlight. Kinda missing a cheese platter which would have been nice.

Our wine glasses and water was not filled throughout the meal, the servers did not serve nor were they attentive enough, sort of just left us to pour our drinks ourselves. Little actions like these matter.

Nice ambience, cute place. Good concept, just not executed well, or just lazy.

Perhaps will come back, but not going to...

I think this is BIKO’s greatest project yet. This could be my favorite asian fusion restaurant of all time.

The food was exquisite, service was excellent, Indoor smoking available, what else could you really ask for in a restaurant?!?

The bill came down to 829K for 2 people but we ordered like 4 portions and 2 drinks lol, DEFINITELY WORTH EVERY PENNY!

Here is a REALISTIC review of the food: Black Truffle Noodle - (7.0/10) the sauce is watered down, pork neck too bland, sauce too bland (had to ask for more sauce). There were bacon bits but not crispy, not much for a play on texture. Presentation was beautiful but Bakmi Chewy Noodles and Western Creamy sauce? eh.. Idk

Gohyong - (10000000000/10) MUST ORDER. Sauce was perfect, Texture on the gohyong was really good and it looks sooooo appetizing. Will order 9999 plates next time. Can’t get enough of it!

Silk Fried Rice (9.0/10) - Scored almost ALL the points. You get the wok hay, the elements on it was perfect, you get some crispy textures from the salted fish, aromas are delightful and you get some cleaned shrimp with a crunch bite on it (cooked very good). Missing 1/10 because there isn’t a fried sunny side up!

Wagyu Blackpepper Beef - (8.0/10) Beef was a hit or miss! Sometimes you get a very very tender ones and the other times it has got some silver skin to it. Not sure if it was silver skin or the texture is chewy but for a Chinese Style Beef blackpepper? Blew me away! I just wished the blackpepper is grounded smoother. Other than that it’s a well...

The place has a very nice ambiance, a lot of natural light and great cozy interior. But our problem is the waiting. The food we ordered took SOOOOO LONG, it came one by one and took half an hour in between, by the time we got to the main course (mind u this is not some fancy set restaurant, the food isnt supposed to come out like this) we've waited 1.5 hrs in total.

The table beside us ordered after us, but had all their food come out MUCHH MUCH faster than ours even though we ordered the same thing (dim sum and noodles)

And after our main finally came out, the kerang bamboo was suspiciously fishy. So we waited 1.5 hours for an unfresh kerang noodle. Sucks.

My problem is not only that, its how the waiter handled us. Everytime we complained and asked for her to take care of our order bcs it was taking too long, instead of owning up to their mistake and try to speed up the process, they gave us a bunch of reasons, like how the waiting works, or how the kitchen works. Trying to dumb us down as if we dont understand the procedure. Even when we complained about the unfresh kerang she told us thats how a kerang supposed to taste like. But after arguing thank god they took the kerang noodle out of the receipt:

Anyways, the cherry on top is this. Not long after we complained, the manager came to our table. We thought she was going to apologize right? but noooo... She came to tell us to put our water bottle away bcs we're not allowed to bring our own water. The audacity!

Bad experience at...