Restaurants pressed to stay open

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.