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Hello, friends especially foodies!

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My country is rich in many even so many (or too many) delicious authentic dishes for you to try, you could try many from veggies to meat dishes like what we had last Saturday for our late lunch. We arrived late to the restaurant because I needed to take mom to the ophthalmologist for her last control after the cataract surgery.

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It was more than 2 pm when we reached one of the best Indonesian food restaurant branch.

You could see their interior from the outside, I think it was retro glam, because they put the touch of gold into their décor as an accent.

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The place was great, large. So you could choose not to sit among too many customers around. The dining area was cozy, some had batik floor, it dominantly had white and soft green color, nice! You could see their retro style from the ceramic bricks they had on one of their wall too. I thought this place was nice for us to chit chat and having dine in of course!

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The menu they had were all Indonesian dishes. For the packages they had the package of noodle soto, choco banana and mineral water, while the other choice were betawi chicken soto, chicken satay and mineral water. For the soup dishes, they had rawon, pindang bandeng, noodle soto, betawi soto, chicken soto, veggie and rice cake in coconut soup, garang asem soup, cap gomeh rice cake, betawi laksa, ox tail soup, and chicken curry. While the fried rice they had village style fried rice, octail fried rice, lamb fried rice, stinky beans fried rice, or chicken fried rice. They also had tek tek noodle, lamb satay, chicken satay, fried noodle, water spinach noodle, and fried vermicelli rice. For the rice dishes they had presto chicken uduk rice with or without sour veggie soup, complete ulam rice, yellow turmeric chicken rames rice, chicken uduk rice..

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They also still had smashed chicken, and still on rice dishes they had variance of beef semur uduk rice, rendang rames rice, empal timbel rice with sour veggie soup, empal uduk rice, and rendang uduk rice. They also still had egg tofu, betawi salad, ketoprak, uleg rojak, squid rojak and other authentic dishes. They also had some authentic Indonesian snacks, iced, coffee and juice too there!

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We ordered then waiting around 15-20 minutes to get the food delivered and here was our late lunch

Mom ordered beef semur uduk rice while me I ordered their beef empal timbel rice with sour veggie soup. All looked tasty, my rice was wrapped with banana leaves and roasted after cooked.

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Now let me talk to you about the taste and flavour of them, and last I would battle between two kind of beef dishes we had.

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** BEEF SEMUR UDUK RICE **

Uduk rice was rice cooked with coconut soup, it had tasty a bit savory flavour. Beef semur was traditionally deep cooked beef with Indonesian authentic spices such as nutmeg and many other ingredients. It was wet because it cooked with water and it supposed to taste sweet and savory but mom’s had there was light sweet and also light savory, no wonder they gave the peanut chilli paste as the companion. There mom also had tofu and potato semur, a bit fried rice vermicelli which tasted good in savory, fried melinjo chips and also kemangi leaves. Melinjo chips they served had a good quality, pure with bitter authentic melinjo flavour and a bit rough crispy texture.

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** BEEF EMPAL TIMBEL RICE WITH SOUR VEGGIE SOUP **

While mine I had their fried beef empal, it was traditionally cooked to which contained coriander and many authentic spices. It had dried texture as it was fried, it had sweet and a bit savory flavour. As a companion it had red chilli paste which brought spicy fresh flavour, mine also served with fried tempeh and tofu, rimbel rice which tasted as the rice white rice but you could smell that it was roasted. It also had sour veggie soup which contained many veggies such as eggplant, jackfruit, corn, melinjo and peanut. It had sour and a bit sweet flavour, so fresh. You could also try to dip the melinjo chips to it to get a new way to eat chips! (I got the chips from mom, anyway, but you could also buy the melinjo chips separately from our dishes).

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Now the battle is in

The flavour of each: my empal was sweet and a bit savory while mom’s semur was lighter. So I think empal tasted better, it might be because some aspects such as the time to cook and marinated it before.
The texture of each: mine was fried so it was dried in medium softness, while mom was wet in medium softness too. Both had no fat in it. So for texture, no winner.

The sambal (chilli paste) it served with: while my empal served with red spicy chilli paste, mom’s semur served with the peanut chilli paste which had spicy, savory, sweet flavour to hers. Thought mom’s was tastier than mine for the chilli paste.
Now you could see the different between them: from the taste, texture and also chilli paste as a companion, and you who conclude the winner then!?!

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Now about the price, for the lunch without drink we paid 145,530 IDR or around 10 USD. How do you think of it?

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Thanks for reading my article, hope you enjoy it and stay tune for more CRAFT things from me!

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The photos were taken with Samsung A52 5G and I didn’t use any filters on my pictures.

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A bit about the author

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