Spending a day with a Minang restaurant manager in Jakarta

Fifteen years ago, Ibnu Rusdi, 40, forsook the classroom for a different life. The former high school mathematics teacher now manages one of the capital's Minang restaurants, Natrabu, on the frenzied Jl. Agus Salim in Central Jakarta. Born in the West Sumatra town of Bukittinggi, Rusdi lives in Cilandak, South Jakarta, with his wife, Yanti, and their four children. In conversation with The Jakarta Post contributor William Furney.

JAKARTA (JP): "Since this is the holy fasting month of Ramadhan, we all get up at 2 a.m. I feel tired. After praying, Yanti and our maid cook for the family and we eat at 3 a.m. It's just the usual stuff of rice, vegetables and tempeh. I'm not that hungry but I'll force myself to eat. After all, it'll be a long time before I have anything else. Then there are more prayers before we go back to bed at 4:30 a.m.

My day starts properly at 7 a.m. It's out of bed and straight to work, which usually takes about two hours because of the traffic jams.

The first thing I do when I get to work is deal with administrative issues. If it's not the fasting month, the restaurant opens at 9 a.m., but during Ramadhan it's not open until 6 p.m. But we do takeouts from 4 p.m. onward, though not with rice. We're afraid if the food were sold with rice, people would be tempted to eat it outside. So we don't allow that and just sell meat, fish and so on.

I have no trouble fasting. It helps me be a better person because I get to know what the poor people are feeling. I can understand how they live with their difficulties. Often the poor don't have enough to eat and will go for a day or two without any food. During the fasting month, we experience something of what their lives are like.

We have fewer customers these days, down from the 200 or so per day during normal months. But it's still busy, as people like to come here to break the fast.

Right now, we've got 60 employees, 30 of whom are waiters. Everyone is Muslim. That's a necessity in a Minang restaurant. Minang is different from Padang, although they're in the same area of West Sumatra. A Minang restaurant is very traditional, is owned by a Muslim and must have a musholla (prayer room) on the premises so our guests can pray if they want to. Padang restaurants, on the other hand, can be owned by Sundanese or Chinese, different from the people of West Sumatra. Most Padang restaurants don't have a musholla. But the food that's served in both is more or less the same; it's the ideology that's dissimilar.

Since Natrabu opened in 1967, the most popular dishes have been rendang (spicy beef) and sayur daun singkong (a cassava leaves dish), fried cow's lungs, chicken curry, ikan emas (fish) and chicken hearts and necks. These dishes taste great and they're not as spicy as other kinds of Indonesian food.

We're known in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore and get many guests from those countries. They love our food. Both Mahathir Mohamad (Malaysia's prime minister) and Anwar Ibrahim (Malaysia's jailed former deputy prime minister) have eaten here. And many Indonesian ministers frequently come here.

But we have lots of guests from all sorts of other countries: the U.S., Britain and other Western countries, and Australia. And also the Japanese. Every August 17 (Independence Day), we cook for members of the Indonesian Military and various ministers.

We break the fast here after the tarawih (evening Ramadhan prayer), usually with some sweet tea first.

I don't regret leaving teaching behind as my life is much better, and I earn a lot more. I was a high school mathematics teacher for four years and it was tough going. My background is also in accounting, and that's helpful in this job, which I like. We work on a profit-sharing system. Our employees are paid every 100 days and if they run out of money, they can get a sub. It works quite well and everyone's happy. The basic salary for a waiter is about Rp 900,000 every 100 days. Others can earn up to Rp 10 million. It's the same with other restaurants of this type, working on results and a percentage basis. The owner gets 50 percent. If a waiter sees a member of staff taking a tip for himself, he'll say, "Hey, that's not your money, it's ours." Everything is shared.

I leave the restaurant at 8 p.m., when it's full of customers, and get home about an hour later. After a quick chat with Yanti, it's off to bed as another long day draws to a close."