Indonesian food on the menu in Germany

By Sri Pudyastuti Baumeister

BRUNSWICK, Germany (JP): It's a busy evening at Tuk Tuk restaurant in Berlin, but Suwido's friendly greeting to newly arrived guests -- "Hello, how are you? Wait for a moment while I set your table -- makes sure they feel at ease as they wait to take their seats.

With Gending Sundanese music playing in the background and the congenial staff, it's like the people have found a corner of exotic Indonesia in Germany.

The interior decor, with walls made of plaited bamboo, roof of plaited palm leaves and batik tablecloths, accentuates the Indonesian ambience. Carved tissue boxes from Bali sit on the tables and the dimly lit room exudes a romantic atmosphere.

"Night lighting in Indonesia is not very bright, is it?" said the restaurant's owner, better known to guests and staff as Wido.

"Every time we go back home to Indonesia, we bring back with us things like Bali paintings, statues from Yogya or bamboo partitions."

It's taken him about 10 years to put the collection together.

But it's the food that brings the diners in and keeps them coming back for more. Wido learned that Germans like their food spicy but a bit sweet. "So we should know the limits," Wido commented, laughing.

What spice combinations work best for local palates is something all Indonesian restaurateurs need to learn if they want their business to be a success.

"It's impossible for us to make Indonesian cuisine with a precisely authentic taste because Germans are very sensitive to garlic and ginger," said Budiman Hendrian, owner of Teratai House Restaurant in Brunswick, a city of more than 250,000, west of Berlin.

That explains why they do not have the ultra-spicy rendang Padang (braised beef in spicy coconut milk sauce) in Germany.

"What they have is a German-styled Indonesian rendang, tasting a little hot and sweet," Wido said.

He added that German epicureans have come to like Indonesian cuisine, such as the tart but tasty sayur asem (vegetable soup) and opor (chicken cooked in coconut milk), and no longer clump it in one category with Chinese food.

Spices and ingredients, such as tofu, tempeh, coconut, turmeric, sweet soy sauce, candlenuts and even the banana leaves for making pepes (spiced meats or vegetables packed in the leaves and grilled or steamed) are obtained from the Netherlands.

The three Indonesian restaurants in the Brunswick-Berlin area also include Java, whose owner, Thay Fang Gwie, from Malang, East Java, has decorated it in distinctly Indonesian style.

He also gives distinctive Indonesian names to the dishes, such as bebek Bengawan Solo, after the Central Java river, and ayam Betawi (chicken Betawi).

Teratai has three cooks from Jakarta, Java has two, one from Bali and the other is Gwie himself. "I have to stay in the kitchen to keep an eye on the quality," he said.

Gwie acknowledged a problem with the stay permits of his cooks; each has to return home after three years according to Germany's new immigration rules.

Tuk-Tuk is more fortunate. The cooks came to Germany some seven years ago when there was no regulation governing the limit of foreigners from working in Germany.

Although they were not trained cooks, they obtained permanent residence. "They are only friends of my family in Salatiga, who were then trained by my wife, Laksmi," Wido explained.

Today, after years in the business, each cook now has his or her own skill in food preparation.

Early days

Both Wido, 55, and Budiman did not plan to become restaurateurs when they made their move to Germany.

A son of a local government official in Salatiga, Central Java, Wido studied for seven years at the School of Medicine at the University of Berlin, but failed his final exams.

After several years driving a taxi, he decided to open a restaurant serving up the food of his homeland.

"We only had a few competitors then, and the Germans were not really interested in running this line of business" he said.

In 1984 Wido bought Tuk-Tuk, an Indonesian restaurant originally owned by a German who had lived in Indonesia for several years. The German named the restaurant after a tourist resort on Samosir Island, North Sumatra, but owing to the mushrooming of Indonesian and Asian restaurants in the 1980s in Berlin, Tuk-Tuk went bankrupt.

Under the new management consisting of Suwido, Laksmi and his brother in-law Lehnard, Tuk-Tuk flourished.

With bank loans, the trio was able to refurbish the restaurant and it is now a favorite place for local foodies and is listed in several good food guides. Open from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. daily and with seating for 75, the restaurant goes by the motto "serving hot food made from fresh ingredients".

But Widi is not interested in expanding his business. "It is much better to have one well-managed restaurant than several poorly managed ones," he said.

Budiman, known by his friends as Komi, was a technical student of Fachhochschule Hanover when he started his business in 1974. He ran a few restaurants in Hamburg, but they closed due to problems with the business partners. He opened Teratai House, serving Indonesian and Chinese cuisine, in 1989.

To attract more diners, he provides special attractions during the week. There is karaoke and music with a Filipino DJ, angklung (bamboo orchestra) with a buffet of several Indonesian dishes with desserts such as putu (cake made of rice flour stuffed with palm sugar) or dadar gulung (rolled cake stuffed with grated coconut).

Java, once a prestigious restaurant in Brunswick, has suffered a loss of popularity in recent years.

"Going to the restaurant was something to be proud of," said Marsin Sanjaya, 53, a former waiter at the restaurant.

He believed one of the reasons Java was not as popular as before was because it stopped hiring Indonesian students as waiters.

"Many Indonesian students used to work here, it was a plus for the restaurant as they gave information to diners who wanted to visit Indonesia."