Warung Badung serves up quality Padang food

JAKARTA (JP): Warung Badung is nothing if not eclectic. One may talk with the Canadian partner, eat Thai food, drink Mexican beer, listen to a British vocalist, and view Indonesian art all at the same time (except my Mum taught me never to talk with my mouth full).

Situated on Jl. Rumah Sakit Mata Aini, Warung Badung is on the site of the old Ratu Rasa padang restaurant, which had the standard, unholy, car-park-in-the-middle arrangement.

Thankfully, the car park is now a garden, and you'll be able to walk fully a dozen meters to your table. The street itself is blessedly quiet, which makes enjoyable the (non-a.c.) open plan of the eating areas. Where else in Jakarta can you have international food and music and watch and smell the falling rain?

The restaurant itself is breezy, and constructed predominantly from wood and glass. Look about. Efforts are rewarded with visual pleasures such as the hand-carved statues set in the upper windows.

The culinary forte is masakan padang. Enter Ibu Rahmah, to whom one may not speak of padang food without being somewhat drawn in. She speaks of masakan padang in terms of keturunan, which actually means not "culture" but "heredity."

Ibu Rahmah began her apprenticeship, quite literally, at her mother's knee, starting with the responsibility of rice and simple vegetable dishes.

She remembers learning spices and prices in the "lower market" of her home town, Bukittinggi. (Remember little leaf-packages secured a toothpick? Remember, twenty years later, little leaf- packages secured with a toothpick and then stuck in a plastic bag? Pity.)

Ibu explained a little of the cultural aspects of masakan padang, such as the unusual, traditional, near-universal profit- sharing system used in padang cookeries, whereby everyone all the way down takes a cut, not a wage.

I asked her why padang is so popular. (Over 12,000 islands still await me here, but I have grasped the fact that this nosh is omnipresent.) We concluded only that the excellence of the ingredients available to a cook in Western Sumatra is simply a headstart, and that the traditional yellow curry is to die for.

'Bu Rahmah eventually gravitated to the big smoke, Jakarta, and began racking up serious credentials: Natrabu restaurant on Jl. Sabang, 13 years as cook, manager, and educator; several years at the old Ratu Rasa as cook and manager, and a stint in the Kuala Lumpur Hilton. Ratu Rasa folded when she retired ill for a time.

These restaurants are probably still using her recipes, though she concedes a certain dynamic to this: the moment your spoon is out of the pot, someone else's is in. The success of her career, though, she feels, results from an unflagging effort to standardize -- the best part of a book's worth of recipes awaits a lucky publisher.

And other dishes? Burgers, beef (ginger), and Bolognese. "Original Australian Meat Pie." (This is untrue. "Prime steak pie," says the menu, but Australian meat pies were never this good, and the infamous New South Wales' "railway pie" is arguably not even food.) Thai food: tom yang goong, noodle salad, pineapple fried rice, chicken in green curry. Others: nasi soto ayam, three types of ikan bakar (roasted fish), nasi goreng (fancy that!), samosas, kalimari, french fries, "Canadian Grizzly Stew," and the last time I was there, an acolyte was experimenting out back with Iranian shish kebab.

Warung Badung -- "Whey Bay" to its friends -- extends also to much that is non-culinary. It has an art gallery, whose exhibited works have included the paintings of Adrian Arifin and Agus Suwando.

The present exhibitor is Thi Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Canadian artist. The gallery also exhibits ceramics and other sculptures and "reworked" works, i.e., pieces made of such salvaged materials as wrought iron and old wood. The exhibits change monthly, and it is hoped that "Artist and Afficionado Evenings" will begin fairly soon.

A range of classes is regularly held, mostly on the premises, including art classes, Kriya Yoga and Shabala classes and seminars and classes on meditation, past lives, reincarnation and Quantum Learning.

But if the above is not your bag, there is "Wednesday Sport Pub Night." Meet fellow mountain bikers, rock climbers, rugby and Aussie rules players, ultimate frizbee-ers, and -- of course -- underwater-hockey enthusiasts.

Lastly, the details: Warung Badung is halal and uses vegetable cooking oil only. They will caters to meetings, functions, weddings and parties, both on and off the premises, with guaranteed best prices and quality. The dishes range in price from Rp 5,500 for gado-gado to 26,500 for Thai stir-fried cashew chicken. Bir Bintang costs Rp 10,000, Corona Rp 28,000; House wine, red and white, Rp 35,000 per glass; spirits and liquers, Rp 30,000 to Rp 40,000.

Give it a whirl. Ring 520-1501 or just drop in. Warung Badung is perhaps the best warung in Jakarta.

-- Epicurus