Restaurants pressed to stay open

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): Those were the days when Kenny ruled over two restaurants in the heart of Jakarta. His guests remember being treated like royalty feeding on meals fit only for a moghul. The ambience was made even more seductive when Kenny imported live musicians to sit on the floor and play traditional music from medieval India.

Then the rupiah crashed, forcing Kenny to shrink his empire to a tiny kiosk in Pasaraya's basement food court. His monthly income of nearly Rp 72 million (US$8,000) was reduced overnight to Rp 5 million!

His greatest fear is that he might have to start eating up his capital.

"After all the cost of housing, food and education has only gone up," he said.

Yet Kenny is not disheartened. He has already invested in an Indian restaurant in Bali, bang on Kuta Beach and is on the look out for an opportunity to open a bigger, more formal restaurant in Jakarta, the city where he feels most at home.

He has been in the restaurant business for over a decade, his entire working life. "At this stage in my life I don't want to do anything else. My ultimate dream is to provide the most popular dinning experience in town with authentic Indian cuisine."

"Besides the restaurant business in the city has a great future," Kenny added.

Christopher Green, chairman of Casagrande, the association of four and five star hotels, cannot help but agree with him. "These are challenging times, and not just for restaurants and hotels here. The immediate problem is that there are too many restaurants and too few customers. If and when customers do return it will be paradise once again," he said rather optimistically.

Freddy C. Kotambunan of Coterie shared the same idea. "Customers have disappeared as most of our regulars were expatriates. Once the economic situation in the country worsened and it became unsafe to continue working and living in Jakarta, 50 percent of our customers were gone overnight."

Coterie opened in August 1994 and soon became a favorite place for women wanting to chat all afternoon, and all those planning charity events.

Situated in a renovated house, the cozy atmosphere of Coterie, with its coffee and cake corner and shopping arcade on the first floor stacked with delightful knickknacks, is its main attraction apart from the casual but wholesome cuisine for both international and Indonesian palates.

Since the place is famous for its weight-conscious female clientele, Tris Naudur Sitompul makes sure that the city is searched high and low for green vegetables. "We put at least six different kinds of salads on the table and everything has to be as fresh as dew," says Tris, who is affectionately called captain.

Despite the skyrocketing prices of some essential commodities like cheese, the last thing that Coterie wants to do is compromise the quality of its service and food.

And no, they have not laid off any staff members to cut down on costs, nor have they undertaken a special promotional drive. "We are just waiting for the clouds to sail away and for the sun to shine once again upon the business," said Freddy, a retired employee of Pertamina who now loves serving all the beautiful women who come to Coterie from different parts of the world.

However Amigos, the swinging Mexican restaurant could not afford to sit back and watch its business dwindle. With many expatriates having left, it has launched an aggressive drive to lure local customers.

While it is difficult to get a place during lunchtime at Coterie, Amigos wakes up only at dinnertime. Ever since it opened in 1989, Amigos has been a big favorite with the high earning but youthful expatriates who love loud music and luscious margaritas. During these trying economic times, Amigos has added rice, fried chicken and satay to its menu of popular Mexican dishes to entice more Indonesian guests.

The greatest worry at Amigos is the upcoming general election, when it is rumored that the remaining expatriates and rich Indonesians will leave for safer pastures outside the country. "What we are going to do then is anybody's guess," said Asidi, the manager.

Hartanto Soekarsono, general manager at Toscana, Kemang's popular Italian restaurant, says, "I will probably concentrate on completing my book on food and beverage cost control if I run out of business." Unlike most other Italian places around the city where processed pizzas are a speciality, Toscana offers a menu straight out of an Italian mama's kitchen.

To give customers the confidence to keep coming to the restaurant, Hartanto has beefed up security outside the restaurant and is in constant contact with the local police during these troubled times. When Toscana is full to capacity it can end up being responsible for the safety of up to 120 guests, although on a good night these days that number is only 80.

Hartanto thinks he is lucky to be located in South Jakarta, away from all the demonstrations and the rioters in Central Jakarta.

Two of Toscana's patrons, Ayesha and Arif, who used to eat there once a week now frequent the restaurant once a month, if that often. The rising price of everything in Jakarta has forced them to keep tighter control of their budgets, preventing them from eating out as often as they did before.

The boom period for restaurants in the city was between the early 1990s to 1997, with the best years being 1995 and 1996, when profits poured in as if there was no tomorrow.

The Jakarta Dinning restaurant guide, updated in early 1998, lists some 230 restaurants all over the city serving cuisine as diverse as American, Brazilian, Mexican, European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, including the vast variety of food from the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia and east Asia. It is likely that most of these restaurants are struggling to make ends meet these days.

Even Chi Chi's on Jalan Kemang Raya, the main artery of the South Jakarta neighborhood so popular with the expatriate community, is in tears. "In 1991 there were just a handful of restaurants here. Now on this main road itself there are at least 50," explained Setiawan, assistant manager at Chi Chi's.

Chi Chi's now has a modest Asian menu in addition to its regular menu in order to attract Japanese and Korean guests into its magical interior, and is desperately trying to woo the locals with nasi goreng.

Fitrion Hartanato, assistant manager at Mbok Berek in Pondok Indah Plaza, which specializes in traditional Indonesian food made with chicken, cannot be bothered anymore with niceties like hiring pretty waitresses or putting starched tablecloths on the tables.

For what matters to most people these days is one square meal a day, even if it means no more pomp and show.