Warung Badung serves up quality Padang food

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