Jakarta Hilton offers Thai culinary adventure
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The Jakarta Hilton Food Festival is back, now offering the fashionable and flavorful Thai Food and Market Festival.
For those who are familiar with Thai food, do the usual. Prepare your tongue for the sour and spicy bite of tum ab ple, som tum thai, and pla neung manao (try to memorize the names, it'll make you sound hip) and later soothe your burning mouth with a wide array of sweet desserts.
The festival offers 28 dishes from salads, appetizers and main courses to soups and desserts.
The special menu includes papaya salad (som tam), main course green chicken (kaeng kiao wan gai) and Thai custard in pumpkin (sang ka ya fak thong).
Be careful with some of the meals which involve lemon in the making because they could be very sour to most non-Thai palates, and they could make you wince and want to laugh at the same time.
The spicy prawn soup (tom yum kung) is already slightly sour and spicy, so refrain from adding the provided lemon sauce until you gauge your forbearance.
Take note on this one: The steamed fish with lemon and chili can be so sour you might want to cry.
Almost all seven of the salad dishes are also sour, but not that sour. They are very refreshing and make you happy.
Curry lovers can enjoy various curry dishes like green curry with chicken (kaeng khiao wan kai) and red curry with roasted duck (kaeng phat pet yang).
Do not miss the lemon juice with ginger ale sprinkled with lemon grass. The tang is uncannily delicious.
The price for the lunch buffet is Rp 137,000++ (US$13.70) for one person and for the dinner buffet Rp 150,000++ also for one person.
The chef, flown in from Thailand, Therapong Kochpratarn, has experience in a 5-star hotel, a yacht and as manager of a Thai restaurant and noodle bar in Surfers Paradise, Australia. He is now a cooking teacher in Thailand.
The festival is held in conjunction with the celebration of the 55th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and Thailand.
Thailand Ambassador Her Excellency Atchara Seriputra opened on Sept. 7 the festival, which also provides some cultural attractions.
The food festival in Hilton's Lagoon Cafe opens until Sept. 17.