The Elements Unearthed

Jakarta Day 5: Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Sederhana, a western Sumatra restaurant chain. We ate lunch there.

After our visit to SMAN 8 Jakarta, we boarded the bus and traveled to a western Sumatran restaurant. Along the way, we passed through several districts with businesses that seemed to specialize in one particular type of goods. There was the office supply district, selling office chairs and filing cabinets, among other things. There was the car repair district with shops and auto parts stores. And there was even a very small handicapped equipment district. I’m not sure what the advantage would be to congregate similar businesses in the same areas – perhaps it would be for customers, since if you know you need office supplies, then there is a particular area of the city where you go to find them. You don’t have to run around the whole city going from store to store. But I can’t figure out how this would be an advantage to the stores themselves. It would lead to increased competition and lower prices and less profits. Maybe concentrating customers more than makes up for increased competition.

West Sumatran food is served in a series of small bowls and you only pay for what you eat. Any unused dishes go back in the warming oven for other customers.

We wound up back on the same loop we were this morning, wondering if we would be eating at Wong Solo after all. Instead, we stopped at an interestingly designed restaurant I had noticed this morning, called Sederhana. It had the steeply pitched roof corners of west Sumatran architecture, and Dewi explained this was the style of food of her native area.

We managed to find a place where the bus could pull over enough for us to get out and walk in. We sat at two long tables as the waiters brought out a large assortment of small dishes, all with different types of food. The style of eating here is somewhat like a buffet, but all the dishes are brought to your table and you pick the ones you want to eat and pay for only those. The ones not touched will be stacked back under the heat lamps for the next customers. So it was important that we not pick little bits from many dishes – we had to eat all of one dish before starting another of the same food.

Close up of Sumatran dishes, ranging from sliced cucumber to spicy chicken and curried fish.

It was pretty spicy stuff, but delicious. There was chicken in various sauces ranging from spicy roasted chicken with sambal to chicken in curry sauce. There was tasty beef rendang, grilled fish, vegetables cooked in coconut milk, and many more. I tried a variety, and liked some more than others. I’m not a big fan of curry, but can eat it if I need to. We had drinks such as Stroberi Fanta or bottled water, some dessert-like dishes such as flan or gelatin, and many more. We passed things around and tried to finish all the dishes we started.

The Bailarung Hotel in Jakarta. The top floor is designed with traditional western Sumatran architecture.

The bus managed to park by the restaurant, so we boarded again and headed toward the new downtown area and U.S. Consulate for our next stop.