Semarang's oldest restaurant serves up history

Semarang's oldest restaurant serves up history

By R. Kristiawan

SEMARANG (JP): The story of Toko Oen, the city's oldest
restaurant, begins in 1922 in Yogyakarta with a housewife who had
time on her hands.

Liem Gien Nio was the wife of Oen Tjoen Hok, a Chinese-
Indonesian lieutenant, who wanted something to do after finishing
her housework. She was an expert cook of Dutch and Chinese food,
so she started making different types of cookies and selling
them, with her customers including the Chinese and Dutch
communities and the Javanese nobility of Yogyakarta.

The cookies sold like, well, hot cakes. Liem soon established
a small cake shop, Toko Oen, at the strategic location of Jl.
Tugu Kidul in Yogyakarta, with its name taken from her husband.
The shop, with its delicious cakes and cookies, soon established
a regular customer base.

As more people came to try the cakes, the family opened
another room where people could sit down and have a drink.
After three years, they expanded the restaurant again and hired
staff to help them, including cooks making more substantial meals
than cakes.

The family considered opening branches outside of Yogyakarta,
and on April 16, 1936, Toko Oen Semarang on Bodjong Weg, now
Jalan Pemuda, served up its first meals to customers. Branches in
Jakarta and Malang soon followed.

Bodjong, running from the Tugu Muda (Youth Monument) through
to the harbor, was the main road in Semarang, home to important
offices such as the train bureau and post office.

Liem's granddaughter Yenny Megaputri, who is a graduate in
architecture from Delft University and manages Toko Oen, said the
restaurant, with its tall windows and high curved roof, was built
in the Jugendstijl (young style) that was popular in Europe from
the end of the 19th century.

What makes Toko Oen special it that it has not changed over
the years. Today it has a mall in front of it and modern shops as
its neighbors, but Toko Oen has not changed.

Toko Oen has always been famed for its rich menu -- beef steak
(a European style dish which, however, is never found in the Old
World), fried rice, satay, tutti frutti ice cream and many others
are firm favorites, just as they were when president Sukarno and
the Sultan of Yogyakarta dined there.

Its interior is even more beautiful than its exterior. The
windows have green curtains and there are checkered tiles on the
floor. Two fans, like in the old days, fight the Semarang heat. A
grand piano has been a resident since 1936 and it still works
well today. Dutch cookies and cakes are displayed in tall glass
jars, and its menus and crockery hark back to the 1930s.

Even the waiters, some of them are the sons of the men who
first worked in Toko Oen, wear the peci (traditional black cap)
and white uniforms of their forbears (the Javanese blangkon hat
worn by waiters before independence was changed to the peci at
Sukarno's suggestion.

"If a chair is broken, we change it for a similar one," said
Agustiana Sustianawati, one of the staff members.

Yenny Megaputri said any change would be to the detriment of
the restaurant's atmosphere.

"I love old buildings so I will not make any change to this
restaurant," said Yenny.

The Semarang restaurant is the only one in Indonesia still run
by the family. In 1958, Toko Oen Jakarta and Yogyakarta stopped
running due to the absence of family members willing to take them
over. Toko Oen Malang is still running but under different
management. But Yenny has made some strategic business steps. She
opened two branches in Delft and The Hague respectively in 1997
and 2000

Because of its history and its quaint colonial
characteristics, Toko Oen is a favorite place to visit for Dutch
tour groups. Some of them spent their youth in Semarang; as they
sit on the chairs in Toko Oen, perhaps they are reliving in their
mind the days of their youth when they danced, sang and dined at
this famous restaurant.