Hello, friends especially foodies!
During this pandemic it is not easy now to travel to another city even the city is in the same country where we live but mom misses the taste of Balinese dish. Maybe many of you already came to Bali? Besides many beautiful places to go and many authentic traditional culture to watch, Bali also has tasty food that you won't forget. In my childhood i also spent a little time in Bali that both mom and i won't forget.. cause there we tasted such tasty delicious food :).
Now I would like to share our experience in having a perfect lunch, with Balinese and Lombok Dish, in a restaurant that was popular of their deliciousness in their speciality, Balinese and Lombok dish. You could say that this restaurant is one of the best we have here. A branch of the same name restaurant in Bali and yesterday we had our second lunch there.
The Outlook
The restaurant where we had our second lunch was located on 5th level Grand Indonesia Shopping Center, Central Jakarta. Mom looked at the menu and saw the menu that she missed, betutu chicken.
That time after a bit walking and see around in this mall we felt hungry, so we decided to eat here.
The Dining Area
This restaurant had a really nice homy interior with Bali and Lombok style. You could see they had the limitation of customers' number here. For their unique chairs around round table only allowed to be used by 2 persons. The restaurant had a clean, neat and cosy dining area. And although we came at around 2 pm something which was not a dine time, there were customers here so you could see how popular this restaurant here.
The Menu
Food menus
Drink menus
As you could see above they had many tasty dishes from Bali and Lombok. Both islands are popular tourist destinations in our lovely country, Indonesia. Both also had many tasty authentic dishes which you need to try cause they had special Indonesian spices to bring Indonesian authentic taste.
The Food
It took around 15-20 minutes to get our food delivered. Mom's came then also mine. Here was our food
Maybe you asked me what is that?
Mom chose the one from Bali, chicken in the yellow soup which called Betutu chicken. While mine the tasty grilled popular chicken which came from Lombok, Taliwang Chicken.
The Taste
Mom's betutu chicken had soft texture. Mom needed to choose thigh or breast for this chicken when we ordered. You could taste that it had the spices like lemongrass, tamarind and other special authentic Indonesian spices. It had a special flavour of savory and mild spicy with the cassava leaves cooked with it. Plus it also served with sate lilit (wrapped Balinese satay) which was soft and had sweet flavour to complete the taste you get. To complete it they also gave two kind of authentic sambal (chilli paste).
Mine's taliwang chicken had a wealthy flavour. It had sweet, savory, and spicy flavour in a chicken. So authentic and complete. Plus they had half chicken for this menu. So soft and tasty for a dish. Plus it was served with fresh plecing kangkung (kale). For this dish they had a different sambal which was different from mom's, it was surprisingly spicy.
The Difference
#1 Texture
Betutu chicken cooked in soup so they stirred it on a stove but it was without coconut milk. While for taliwang they need to roast it. So the effect would be on its' smell. Taliwang had more temptating smell than betutu.
#2 The flavour
Betutu had only savory and spicy flavour while the Taliwang chicken had a complete flavour of sweet, savory and spicy.
#3 The spices
The indonesian spices they used for each dish was different each other. For the example, Betutu had tamarind, while Taliwang didn't and also other spices.
Conclusion:
Both mom and i, thought that here in this restaurant, the Taliwang chicken was the best and uncomparable than the Betutu chicken. Cause although the Betutu chicken was also tasty but the authentic tastier one was their Taliwang Chicken.
The Service
Here they had really nice and kind waiters and waitress. You could ask them to explain the menu. They would also ask permission if they needed to clean our tables.
The Price
Our lunch costed us 153,912 IDR but i used a platform of payment which gave me 10,000 IDR off so it was 143,912 IDR or around 10 USD. Taliwang chicken package was only a bit more expensive than the betutu, but you would get the extra (more tasty, and bigger chicken).
So now you try yourselves to eat tasty dishes and tell me what would you choose between two kinda chicken they had!
Taliwang Bali
5th Level West Mall
Grand Indonesia Shopping Center
Central Jakarta
Open daily 10am-9pm