Bakmi Tan, Jakarta

After watching all that food on Indonesian Ironchef, I was feeling rather famished. I'm glad we left soon for some breakfast. I could smell the scent of good cooking from a distance as we approached this eatery.

Bakmi Tan is another noodle joint that was on the itinery. Noodles are quite popular as a breakfast item here. We actually tried a total of three noodle joints and at the end of the last one, I will reveal my verdict.

For starters we had some Indonesian otak, unlike the local ones we get here, this wasn't actually spicy and tasted more like fishcake. But a very fragrant fishcake though as I could taste the use of coconut milk in this. Not too bad at all.

A side-dish of fried wantons. The pastry skin in this is huge and the meat filling at the end is really little but I heard that's how it's made here, almost like a large cracker where the meat only makes a cameo apperance.

Fried meatball, this tasted greasy and salty enough to be tasty.

But like Indonesian shumais, there seemed to be more flour than meat in this. I would have appreciated a slightly meatier bite.

As with Bakmi "Orpa", their specialty here is shredded chicken noodles as well. This came topped with some crispy bits. I love crispy bits. The noodle itself was slightly less bouncy than Orpa's but a very nice flavor still shone through. This also cost less than a bowl at Orpa's and came in a larger serve as well, so I guess there was more value in a way.

D