Steaming shabu-shabu at Aoki restaurant

JAKARTA (JP): With sheets of rain falling on the city seemingly every day, now is the perfect time to find comfort and warmth in an exquisite bowl of shabu-shabu.

Located in the basement of Hotel Gran Mahakam in South Jakarta and accessible by an elegant curved staircase is the Japanese restaurant Aoki. It also has its own entrance where guests can enter the restaurant without having to plow through the busy thoroughfare of the hotel lobby.

The menu was pretty extensive and we decided to concentrate on the restaurant's specialty, which is shabu-shabu, grill and sushi.

The Menu Aoki at Rp 150,000++ was a pretty good deal. It was made up of six courses which were samplers of all of the restaurant's most popular items. There was a choice of udon noodles or steamed rice, as well as a free flow of ocha.

The portions are ample for two but you may want to supplement it with sushi (Rp 15,000 to Rp 140,000 ++ per portion) and/or Japanese fried rice (Rp 20,000++).

The otoshi (appetizer) was konyaku, called ubi talas in Indonesian, which is a type of root. Made up of brownish strips sprinkled with sesame seeds, it reminded me of jellyfish, which is served as a cold appetizer at Chinese banquets. The strips were served on a single round shrimp cracker which added a nice crunch to the chewy strips.

The Ebiten handroll (Rp 25,000++ when ordered from the a la carte menu) was made up of a single tempura shrimp rolled up in a seaweed cone together with crab sticks, salad, avocado, flying fish roe and vinegared rice. I had mine custom-made -- boiled shrimp instead of fried tempura, and without the mayonnaise.

The roe was liberally sprinkled -- not just on the top but throughout the entire roll. In some restaurants, you can barely taste the eggs, but this particular one had so many you could actually feel them burst as you bit into them. The handroll would have been perfect if the nori (seaweed roll) had been crisp.

The grilled cod, or gindara (Rp 55,000++) with teriyaki sauce was excellent. It was fresh and tender, grilled to perfection. All grills are served with the restaurant's special Robatayaki sauce -- a sort of pickle in soy sauce -- made of cubes of onions, chilies and tomato. It had an unusual sweetish sourish taste; I preferred my gindara on its own so that I could savor its natural flavor.

This was followed by teriyaki chicken. Unfortunately there was more batter than there was chicken. Then I noticed that the menu described it as being made from spring chicken, which may explain why there was not much meat.

The highlight of the dinner was the shabu-shabu. The contraption for cooking it was fascinating. A very knowledgeable waitress, Iva, first placed a basket directly on the electric stove. Then a special type of treated paper called kaminabe, much like a paper coffee filter, was placed in the basket to serve as the pot. A mild clear stock made from vegetables and seafood was poured into the paper pot and it began to simmer almost as soon as the power was switched on. You can touch the paper pot even as it boils because it does not conduct heat. The amazing thing was that it didn't leak or burn. The paper is discarded after each use.

Shabu-shabu is the Japanese version of the Chinese steamboat or Mongolian hot pot. The Menu Aoki shabu-shabu comes with U.S. sirloin beef slices (Rp 100,000 ++); vegetables such as Chinese cabbage, Japanese spinach, carrots and bean sprouts; enoki, shiitake and champignon mushrooms; Japanese tofu and vemicilli.

When the ingredients were cooked, they were scooped into the individual bowls and eaten with two types of sauces: peanut sesame oil sauce for the beef and the pungent ponju -- a basic shoyu sauce with big heaps of radish and garlic added -- for the vegetables.

Two side dishes we had ordered to supplement the Menu Aoki were interesting and excellent.

Salmon skin maki (Rp 15,000++) was comprised of deep-fried salmon skin rolled with vinegared rice and salad. It had a delectable taste and crunch, but needs to be eaten right away otherwise the skin loses its crispiness as it absorbs moisture from the rice.

Kintamani maki (Rp 40,000++) contained six substantial pieces per portion. The sushi was rolled with fried king prawn and crab stick, and topped with the skin of avocado and flying fish roe. The mayonnaise was subtle and combined well with the avocado.

Of the two desserts offered -- melon a la mode and mochi ice cream -- we liked the latter so much that we had seconds. It was a scoop of delicious vanilla ice cream covered with a chewy layer of dough made from glutinous flour. (Grace Segran)