Churros - Spanish Doughnut

Hola!

This time I wanna share a bit about one of my favorite snack in town. CHURROS - A spanish doughnut which is often served with (and even dipped in) hot chocolate. Yes, it's not an easy-to-find food in my town, Jakarta. Actually, the first time I ate this stuff was when I was still in elementary school. At that time a new supermarket was opened at SCBD, Jakarta, which named The Club Store. It sold many imported goods, mainly from USA, and my family and I often went there on Sunday. This store was opened before Carrefour came to Indonesia, so it was really crowded in every visit I made. 

After buy many kind of stuffs, we usually sit on their small food corner which sold many kinds of delicious food. Dimsum's shumai (siomai), American style pizza (thin crust and jumbo size), Hotdog, refillable soft drink, and churros. There are many other food but I don't really interested with them hahaha. The first time I saw people eating churros I was really excited to try it too, but since I was a small kid and just could asked my parents to buy me some. After many times asked them to buy churros, my dad then buy 2 churros for 4 of us and we fell in love with churro at the very first bite :P

I could remember the taste was crispy (outside) but tender (inside), and the cinnamon aroma was really well-matched with the churro itself. They used granulated sugar for the icing and they don't served it with any dipping sauce. I even drooling when I write this post because I try to remember how it taste like. 

Many years after that, this store was closed down (i don't know why), and changed the name to Grand Lucky. Since then, we never visit it anymore until a month ago I went there after class and I found they doesn't sell any churros anymore. :( Then I found a place where served churros in Jakarta called Churreria. Churreria have many kinds of churros servings. One of my favorites was like the photo below.

Churreria

I couldn't remember what is this menu called haha.

It contains 6 churros (with cinnamon sugar icing) and 2 kinds of dipping sauce (dark chocolate & caramel). The texture was super cripsy outside and a little bit soft inside. I could say it's too dry for me, because the soft section is too small. The cinnamon sugar also wasn't as good as what The Club Store give us, but I love the dipping sauce. The chocolate and caramel sauce is really improving the taste of these churros.

Beside this, Churreria also served their churros with many kinds of ice cream and any other toppings which make it looks colorful and even glorious. For me, it looks attractive, but I still prefer the original one. :)

Another place to find churros in Jakarta is Los Churros. I was accidentally found this place in my way home from campus. The place is small and they only sell churros for "take away". The have many kinds of dipping sauce like chocolate, caramel, vanilla, and strawberry. They even have filled churros (churros with sauces filling inside). I like the texture, it's softer than Churreria's but it still different from what I want. Los Churros dipping sauce texture is also different from Churreria's, which for me, it's too thick. It's more like a custard than a dipping sauce. hehehe. For Los Churros, I prefer their filled churros but they need to add more filling so it will taste better. And oh I forgot to take a picture of the churros I bought from Los Churros, here some photos which I took from Los Churros' twitter account. Check it out!

Los Churros (photo by Los Churros)

Churros with dipping sauce (photo by Los Churros)

In conclusion, I haven't met the most perfect churros in Jakarta like the one which The Club Store served, but in order to find it, I will keep on searching for any other churros store in my town. :)

P.S: If any of you know any other churros store in Jakarta and surrounding areas, please tell my by mention it in the comment section. Okay? See you in the next post :)

Taiwanese food

Taiwanese food has always looks good & doesn't look really different with chinese food for me.. But I haven't try any of them untill I found Little Taiwan at Emporium Pluit Mall.. The restaurant looks very active yet comfortable.. My mom was curious about the food too so we decided to have dinner here :)

We ordered many kinds of famous Taiwanese food and snacks here..

Crispy Salted Chicken

Taiwanese Special Toast

Beef Braised Noodle

Special Stewed Rice Set 

Tang Tang Noodle

Golden Yam Ball

Crabstick Roll

After having a great taiwanese style dinner, we walk around the mall and start searching for a drink.. Then we saw Come Buy's long queue and interested to join it.. hahaha 

Hadramout - Special Arabian Lunch

Yeah yeah.. This is the first time I try an Arabian Cuisine.. I went to Hadramaout Restaurant near Mangarai, with some friends (Yogi, Calvin, Rahmat, Siska, and Andre).. We went to a same faculty with different major.. Lately we chat a lot about food and culinary things, and also any other things that sometimes made me crazy. How could we chat among each other? First of all, Yogi asked me if I know any place where sold Arabian food in Jakarta.. Then I remember a person (my mentor in my intership program) have told me a nice arabian restaurant, named Abunawas. After that, I recommended it to Yogi, as he also asked by Calvin to search any arabian restaurant. Since then, Yogi invited me to join their small chat group in LINE messenger and made a plan to go to Abunawas. But then I read Bondan Winarno's review about arabian restaurant and he said Hadramout is a good one, so we decided to go to Hadramout Restaurant.

We planned to leave our campus at 11a.m. but because some of us were late, we start our journey at 11.40 a.m.. Hmmm.. At the beginning of the journey we really want to listen to any music that could make us sing along, then Calvin asked Andre to play any music from his phone and Andre played 60's and 70's song -___-'

While listening to some oldies song, Rahmat take out 2 kinds of chocolate that he bought in Singapore (if I'm not mistaken). Hershey's Special Dark Luscious Pearls of Chocolate and Toblerone Mini Dark Chocolate. It's all taste great! Here's some pics of them

Hershey's Special Dark Luscious Pearls of Chocolate

Toblerone Mini Dark Chocolate

We got some traffic jams on our way because we past several Mosques which are conducting Friday Prayers, but it was not really bad and we arrived at the restaurant after about an hour of journey.

restaurant's billboard

Interrior decoration

Room No. 9

The Menu

Siska - Calvin - Andre

Rahmat - Yogi

Rahmat - Yogi - Me - Siska

Yup! We didn't sit on a chair with dinning table, we sat on a carpet! They divided the restaurant to some cubicles like this. That is the uniqueness of this restaurant, they set the interior decoration so we could experience an arabian atmosphere. :)

We ordered some special arabian food and snacks. The first food served is Maamoul, which is Bakpia looked alike with different ingredients and different kind of filling. Lol. The waitress told us that this maamoul was imported from United Arab Emirates. Maamoul was filled with black dates, and it was not as sweet as I thought before. haha

Maamoul

Second, Hadramout Sweet. When we saw it on the menu, Hadramout Sweet was pictured as a small piece of sweet cake, but when it arrived we could see it as a pudding, obviously. When I try to eat it, I can clearly taste it as a caramel pudding with Marie Biscuits on it. -__-'

Hadramout Sweet

For the beverages we ordered Arabic Pot Tea with Moroccan Tea. Besides tea bag, they also use mint leaves and it's all served in a pot plus arabian signature tea sets.  

Moroccan Tea

 Here's another food we ate. Arabic bread with Homous, Mix Grill (chicken & lamb meat kebab), and Tabouleh. At last Ramadhan month, I read many articles about how Arabian people break fasting, and I found that they usually eat Homous for break fasting, so I want to try to eat it. Homous was made of some kinds of nuts and olive oil. It's appetizing! 

Arabic Bread and Homous

Then our mix grill came and all of us just laugh at the shape! Yes, I know what you're thinking about! :D
At the beginning we also feel like don't want to eat them, but after tasting it, we found it great because it's contains many spices that make it tasty. Then, we try to eat the kebab with bread + homous.

Mix Grill

Tadaaa! Arab Bread + Homous + Kebab

After eating the kebab, we still have one more arab bread, so Yogi and Rahmat decided to order Tabouleh to be eaten with the bread :)

Tabouleh

The Bill

A day before, Andre said he want to go for karaoke after this lunch, Yogi said he want to go to The National Library, I said I want to go home earlier because I wanna bought a birthday cake for my mom, but all of us not really sure about what are we going to do after lunch. Then, we just go around the area and Calvin suggest me to buy AJ Bakery's Cake, but it's too far away at Kelapa Gading.. After going nowhere, almost for one and a half hour, we have Calvin driving towards Kelapa Gading area and he really wanna go to AJ Bakery to buy Pizza Bread.. Calvin said the cakes there is good too, but I wasn't really interested with the cake display.. Then, Rahmat suggest me to buy Maison Annalita Cake's Ice Cream Taart so we went there and I got the cake.. Vanilla - Choco Ice cream with chocolate cake.. :)

The Cake

My lovely pretty mom :)

I can't wait to have another fun time with them, maybe we should go somewhere to eat Indian Cuisine, Chinese, or try any other arabian restaurant and many more :)

Lawson Station Part 2

Blogpost kali ini edisi khusus bahasa Indonesia boleh ya? :)

Beberapa hari belakangan ini sering terlintas di pikiran saya untuk mencoba makanan di beberapa tempat, khususnya di sekitar Depok, dimana kampus saya berada. Di suatu siang menjelang sore, tiba-tiba rasa lapar menghantui, karena memang belum makan siang sama sekali. Setelah berputar-putar sedikit di jalan Margonda, saya menemukan gerai Lawson Station dan memutuskan untuk masuk ke sana.

Menu yang ingin saya coba saat itu adalah Oden, karena menurut rekomendasi beberapa teman rasanya unik dan rendah kalori. :) Kemudian saya memesan beberapa varian oden yang terlihat cukup menarik yaitu sandwich tofu, edamame ball, dan cheesy star.

Kemudian saya memesan curry don-nya karena saya sangat suka dengan masakan kari jepang dan penasaran seperti apa rasa curry don di Lawson.

Oden

Edamame Ball

Untuk keseluruhan oden, menurut saya cukup enak dan akan terasa menyenangkan jika dimakan ketika sedang hujan, karena kuahnya sangat menghangatkan. Dan dari ketiga varian oden yang saya makan ini, menurut saya cheesy star paling terasa isinya, yang lainnya agak hambar tapi justru sehat.

Curry don sendiri rasanya sebenarnya standar, tapi ada yang terasa aneh dengan wortel dan bumbu kari-nya. Ketika dimakan, wortel-nya terasa terlalu kering dan bumbu karinya terasa agak lengket di lidah. Tapi secara keseluruhan masih acceptable kok.

Curry Don

Merasa kurang puas dengan apa yang saya pesan, sebelum pulang saya kembali melihat-lihat produk yang dijual Lawson dan saya tertarik untuk mencoba dorayaki, mochi dan salah satu udon instan yang dijual di sana. Saya membeli Dorayaki dengan isian kacang merah dan mochi rasa black forest. Ternyata rasanya sangat enak terutama untuk mochi-nya, karena benar-benar terasa seperti kue black forest sesungguhnya (walaupun menurut saya krim-nya terlalu banyak).

Ogura Dorayaki

Bagian dalam Mochi

Setelah memakan semuanya, beberapa hari kemudian saya memutuskan untuk memasak udon instan ini, dan ternyata rasanya enak karena aroma khas rumput laut dan seafood-nya.

NongShim Instant Udon

Isi dari kemasan

Tada!! Hasil masakan saya :)

Untuk harga produk yang dijual di sana tergolong menengah, dan untuk makanan menurut saya cukup terjangkau. Sekian postingan kali ini, sampai jumpa di post selanjutnya :)