Indo Spice Restaurant — Restaurant in Philadelphia

It's probably been at least five years since I last had Indonesian food specifically, but god I was missing out on so much.

First of all, the decor in Indo Spice is top notch. The wall is lined with beautiful paintings, each with their own accent light above. Feels very high end despite the prices not being unreasonable at all.

My friends and I started out our meal with two appetizers: corn fritters and pork satay. The fritters were essentially a comfort food and reminded me a lot of latkes I grew up eating on Hanukkah or the corn fritters and hush puppies you can find down south where my family is originally from. Even then, though, they had a unique flavor to them which I can't quite place but was very satisfying. The pork satay was also extremely nostalgic for me since I had spent much of my childhood frequenting an Indonesian place simply called "Sate" in the Northern Virginia suburb I hail from. That place is unfortunately long gone, but it's good to know those delicious flavors can still be found in my adopted home of Philly.

As for the entree, I selected a dish simply called "UP Noodles." The dish is served as a bowl of noodles with two styles of pork, vegetables, and wontons of both the fried and steamed varieties. On the side was a smaller bowl of broth and an even smaller bowl of spicy sauce. To assemble the dish, you pour the broth over the contents in the larger bowl and then add the spicy sauce to taste. I can usually handle quite a bit of spice, but this sauce definitely wasn't messing around. I recommend adding a little dash to test your tolerance and then add more as you eat if you can handle it.

My friends got dishes of their own, but to save on word count I'll just add that they were also delicious (no I didn't steal any from them, I asked nicely).

For dessert, because one of my friends had submitted a review while sitting there, we received a free large bowl of a shaved ice treat dyed pink by the happy soda syrup (a type of soda popular in Indonesia) mixed with candied bananas and condensed milk. Also incredible and very unique.

The service was quite good and the owner/manager was very friendly. Overall, I highly recommend and will be coming back as...

I’m sorry, I really don’t like writing bad reviews, but it’s very rare that I’ll order a meal that turns out to be inedible. This is a warning for future customers to be careful with the nasi ayam geprek/smashed chicken rice.

The fried chicken comes with garlic sambal belacan, but I think they either made the sambal incorrectly or added WAYYY too much to my dish. You can see in my photo that it was smothered in sambal. Even so, I couldn’t taste any garlic or shrimp paste in the sambal, just chillies, so it didn’t taste good itself. The sambal I’ve had from other places nearby have sometimes been the highlight of the dish, so this was incredibly disappointing.

I was only able to take a few bites before I had to stop eating entirely.

The spiciness was overwhelming and left me in pain for a whole day- not exaggerating. And I have a good spice tolerance! For comparison, I enjoy eating Samyang spicy chicken instant noodles, and this was 2-3x that.

On the menu, this item is noted with 2 chili peppers. Some other items have 3 - I can’t even imagine how spicy that would be.

The interior is beautiful and the service was perfect, but my dish was simply horrible.

I also ordered a Rawon beef soup for takeout at the same time I ordered my chicken dish. It was ok- only two pieces of fried beef which was kind of sad.

Other cons- They charge a 3% fee for credit cards. They offer a free food item if you leave a good Google review, which is dishonest and why this place has 5 stars.

For the staff reading this, please feel free to respond and educate me on sambal if I’m missing something. In any case, I think you should leave it on the side by default in the future.

EDIT: I was hoping for a better response, but theirs was disappointing as well. The server did ask me if I wanted sambal on the side, and I said yes, but that didn’t happen. Yes, I saw the menu photo - my dish looks a little different, and you can compare for yourself. I won’t...

The place just opened in Feb 2025. Street parking can get tricky depending on time of day. Ambience is warm and welcoming, no wait for table when we came in. One round table and one corner booth for bigger group seatings, the rest are smaller tables. Yusak our server was very friendly and informative. We ordered Pork Satay (really good! Juicy and perfectly seasoned), Coto Makasar (could use a stronger seasoning but was tasty enough once the sambal was added into it), UP Noodle (their signature dish, very tasty and generously filled with assorted toppings: steamed & fried wonton, slices of bbq pork and crispy pork. The noodle texture was perfectly chewy). For dessert we ordered Es Cendol (shredded rice flour jelly with coconut milk & palm sugar) and Es Pallu Butung (sliced banana on shaved ice with condensed milk), both deliciously hit the spot. Overall: very pleasant first experience, will come back to try the different stuff on their menu. Tip: it would be great if the online menu on their website provides item descriptions like on the paper menu...