Makanmakan Asian Streat Food Fare — Restaurant in Sandy

MakanMakan bills itself as serving, "Asian StrEat Food Fare", and its logo is a food cart, but it's an Indonesian restaurant at heart. I can't recall ever before eating at an Indonesian restaurant and, now, I regret missing out on a lot of tasty meals.

My expectations weren't particularly high for the restaurant. I chose it because I saw curry goat and shave ice on the menu. Those expectations didn't change when I saw it. It's a newer restaurant in a standalone building with a jeweler and a pancake house, across from a coffeehouse drive-through window.

Inside, the decor is new and modern, with reclaimed wood and corrugated, galvanized sheet metal on the walls and red-painted exposed ductwork along the ceiling. They appear to do a lot of take-out business and there was a small lunch crowd at the nicely spaced tables.

Service was quick and efficient. The food is made to order, but mine didn't take long. I ordered Curry Goat / Gulai Kambing, which is halal goat cubes cooked in yellow curry sauce. It's described as "bone-in", but mine was boneless except for one tiny shard. I also ordered Stir Fry Water Spinach / Cah Kangkung, which is stir fried water spinach in garlic sauce. It arrived sizzling and fragrant on an extremely hot plate. Finally, I ordered Spicy Eggplant / Terong Balado, which is eggplant stir fried in Indonesian chili sambal sauce. It was sweet and salty, and had plenty of fresh ginger in it.

Everything that I ordered was delicious. I had enough food for three people and ended up taking a lot of it home, because I wanted to save room for dessert. The Shave Ice / Es Campur is described as Indonesian shave ice with jelly, fruits, syrup and condensed milk, but the ice was crushed, not shaved. It's analogous to Filipino halo halo and Vietnamese tricolor. The ice quickly became stained pinkish red by something other than condensed milk. The only topping that I recognized was little lychees. The other toppings were strands of a golden yellow fruit that looks like, but isn't, jackfruit (aka langka in the Philippines), green wormlike strands that are soft and mushy like spätzle but made of rice flour, and little cubes of brown jelly that were savory, not sweet (pandan, perhaps?). The sweetest ingredient in the dessert was the lychees.

I really liked everything about my meal, despite the dissonance of the contemporary American, rustic modern decor. There's a lot more on the menu for me to try and I'm already looking forward to returning for...

I do not recommend this restaurant for large groups. I was with a group of 10 people. The server was unable to honor my request for a seperate check. The server took my order for two appetizers and an entrée, but only the entrée was delivered to me. The two appetizers were delivered to another part of the table nowhere near me. When I asked the server about my two appetizers, she had to go looking to see where on the table they were delivered and could find only one of the appetizers.

The servers seem unable to manage what food is delivered to which people at the table for large groups. It seems the restaurant can manage only smaller groups where the servers are not responsible for getting the right food to the right people.

Additionally, when our group was getting up and ready to leave, other servers were very anxious to turn our table over for other customers that were waiting to be seated. The male server who was trying to collect the drinking glasses was turning the glasses over and spilling beverages all over the table and chairs. Some liquid spilled on my coat. I had to quickly grab my coat and get away from the table to avoid getting drenched by the careless removal of beverages from our table.

The wait staff had little regard for our group of 10 to safely clear the table before turning the tables over to make tables for the incoming patrons. I would not recommend this venue for groups of eight or more people. The wait staff cannot deliver the right food to the right people in larger groups and will obviously risk spilling beverages on patrons, seats, and coats in an attempt to turn the tables over quickly for...

I am an outlier in SLC Valley and probably this review will depart from the rest of the rave reviewers (I suspect). That's because I travel a lot and eat amazing food all over the country. I am not easily impressed because I know San Francisco, New York, FL Cuban, Chicago (and NY) Pizza, TXBarbeque, LA Mediterranean, Nashville Modern and so on. What I find is that Utah eateries are SYNTHETIC. They try to mimic this amazing food but always get it wrong. They go through the motions but usually in bid to save money/costs, they screw the food all up. One example of this is keeping prepared food in walk-in refrigerators vs making it fresh! While this may save money and time it personally offends me. Sadly Makanmakan seems to follow this pattern. The food, while palatable, was forgettable. I ordered a clear noodle dish with jumbo prawn (few in there btw), smoked pork. I came as a mix mash of mostly goo. Not the distinguishable separate noodle, vegetable, and meat combination. See photo. Also the steamed rice, always a good barometer of quality was mushy. It seemed like Denny's rice! Wow. You should be doing high quality STICKY rice here. Again this is a restaurant cutting corners. The sticky rice costs more. Again it was palatable but forgettable. I find truly excellent food burns into your memory bank and you can't wait to get back to it. This place is nowhere near that. Add in a noisy concrete floor environment. Service was attentive however and commendable. But in the end I'm not sure I will...