Anoi: Welcome to Vietnam

Karen Stingemore, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

As Vietnam's popularity as a tourist destination grows, so does the reputation of its food, with people around world opening restaurants to capitalize on the country's fresh and fragrant cuisine.

Here too in Jakarta, where a group of five partners recently started the Anoi Vietnamese Kitchen and Bakery in Tebet. After a soft opening for two months, the kitchen is already making a name for itself as a place to go if you have a hankering for authentic Vietnamese food.

The restaurant also happens to be a cool oasis in the middle of a thriving business district, and upon entering you are immediately relaxed by the spacious surroundings lined with tropical plants, so it is easy to see why over-worked businesspeople and executives are flocking there.

One of Anoi's partners, Ocky Karjono, is passionate about Vietnamese food. This passion, he says, helped prompt the creation of the restaurant. It also meant Ocky had to go on a grueling restaurant tour of the country, sampling tasty dishes throughout Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh to find a chef willing to move to Indonesia and help the group make their restaurant a reality.

Anoi's chef makes a range of well-known Vietnamese dishes, including pho, Vietnamese beef noodle soup, and bun tom muc nuong, barbecued shrimp and squid served with vermicelli.

"We wanted the food to be authentic Vietnamese and we also wanted someone who could recreate Vietnam's most popular dishes," Ocky said.

"Jakarta is a metropolitan city and without the continued variety it wouldn't retain its metropolitan status, so there are always more international restaurants popping up around the city, including Vietnamese restaurants," he said.

"Vietnam is really coming into its own at the moment, the popularity of its culture is ever-present, so the timing is right to open a restaurant because the demand is there."

There was also no bakery in their part of Tebet and the partners saw this as a prime opportunity.

Vietnam's history as a former French colony means bread and pastry had become a regular part of the Vietnamese diet. A diner without cakes and pastry wouldn't be the complete experience, Ocky said.

As with most Vietnamese food, the food at Anoi is fresh and healthy and the sauces, including peanut and sweet and sour fish, help to bring out the natural flavors in the meat and vegetables.

The chao tom, shrimp mousse on sugar cane, melts in your mouth, the com suon nuong, barbecue ribs with rice and fresh tomato, is an explosion of flavors and the che cocktai, a Vietnamese fruit cocktail with jelly, durian, jackfruit, mushrooms and lychees, is a colorful and refreshing finish to the meal.

While most Anoi's clientele in the day are businesspeople, families flock to the restaurant in the evenings, and to help accommodate the large numbers, the menu allows for a range of shared dishes with rice -- the traditional way the Vietnamese eat.

The restaurant has a 100-seat capacity and on average has been getting 70 to 100 customers a day, with its busiest times generally from noon until evening.

Customers have the choice of sitting down to a meal or relaxing on nearby sofas with a drink or a choice of a large assortment sweet and savory cakes on offer.

The restaurant's walls are lined with photographs of Vietnamese landmarks, its people, landscapes and fine art.

The relaxing ambience is enhanced by funky, chilled-out music, great for people who want to unwind after work. The space's modern Asian decor, a mixture of dark and light woods, hanging lights and couches, helps too.

Another partner, Yudi Tanasaleh, said the food could be best described as mouth-watering, fresh and tantalizing.

"The Vietnamese chef chose most of the menu as well as Ocky who eats Vietnamese food a lot and has an idea of what Vietnamese dishes Indonesians would prefer over others," Yudi said.

"We hope to expand the business over the next year or so, and adding a few franchises might be on the agenda."

Trading hours are from 11 a.m. until 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday and until 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

The official opening of the restaurant will be sometime next month.