Ennichisai 2013 @ Blok M

Ennichisai is a traditional Japanese festival that has been running for four years in a row, in Blok M otherwise known as the Little Tokyo of Jakarta. I read about it from last year, wanted to go but then missed it completely. So I told myself that I shan't miss it this year.

Since we have been exploring Blok M quite a bit for the past few months, we sorta guess roughly where it will be held and were kinda confident to drive ourselves there. Traffic was heavy getting there, so to save time, Hubs decided to valet the car and we walked out to the streets where festival was. And when we down to the street level, the festival is PACKED! Both of us didn't realised how popular it is.

As we walked along the streets, there's a carnival atmosphere in the air. Booths lined up on both side of street, selling all sort of Japanese street foods, merchandise and games to attract the crowd. At the same time, we also saw Indonesians dressed up in cosplay to join in the fun. 

We decided to grab lunch at our favourite Boci Boci before walking the streets again. As we made our way back to our car, we noticed that some folks were getting ready for the Mikoshi parade. There were three Japanese shrines that paraded the street that afternoon:

The smallest for children...

Mid size for women that had a woman standing on the shrine, chanting and dancing the the rhythm of the drums

And the largest shrine housed on a carriage pulled a group of male volunteers. This shrine also had children providing the drum beats which the entire parada marched to.

The Ennichisai festival ran from noon till night over a period of two days, which ended last night. There were fireworks as well on the concluding night, which we had vantage point to view the display from the comfort of our home. 

Eats: Char Kuey Tiaw in Jakarta

If you are a Chinese born and bred in Malaysia, Singapore or even Brunei for that matter and living abroad, you can't run away from missing that special char kuey tiaw stall that just know how to whip up that plate of especially satisfying char kuey tiaw.

Whenever we have cravings for char kuey tiaw, there is this Kwetiaw Akang along Jl. Arteri Pondok Indah that we will go, to satisfy ourselves once in awhile. We almost always order their kwetiau goreng spesial (by the way the spesial is not a typo, it is how they spell the word special locally) which comes complete with prawns, crab meat, fishcakes, charsiu and lapcheong. The crab meat is real, unlike the vegetarian crab steak that you get in Malaysia because one can sometimes accidentally bit into some remnants crab shells.

Apart from kwetiau goreng, they also have kwetiaw siram (which is Cantonese fried kuey tiaw i.e. wat tan hor), kwetiau sapi or beef kuey tiaw. You can also opt for telor bebek or telor ayam (duck egg or chicken egg) to be fried into your kuey tiaw. I did that the last time but did not get the special aroma that one gets from Penang duck egg char kuey tiaw. So was kinda disappointed. But all in all, Akang is still a place that I would go for decent char kuey tiaw

And then we discovered Kwetiau Kerang Singapore. Now, THIS is truly a serendipitous discovery. Hubs was coming back from a company meeting in Thailand on a Saturday morning. After picking him up at the airport close to lunch time, Hubs suggested why not lunch at Pluit since we were close by. Being so impromptu, I suddenly lacked ideas on where to go and somehow couldn't find any interesting place except Tabona in Pluit Sakti which we had already try the curry noodles.

Anyhow, we decided to head to Pluit Sakti first and then take it from there. Once there, Hubs saw Kwetiaw Kerang Singapore and read that they have very good char kuey tiaw from some blogs. So Kwetiaw Kerang Singapore it was. Despite its name, Kwetiau Kerang Singapore turned out to be a Chinese sit-down restaurant. Too tired and hungry to go anywhere, we ordered two dishes, a rice and their specialty kuey tiaw to share. While the other dishes were good, I didn't bother to take photos of those because the star is really the char kuey tiaw.

At first bite, both Hubs and me looked at each other and said, "Now, THIS stuff really taste like home." Indeed it was. Although the portion was small - only had baby cockles (seriously very baby sizes, but I'm ok with it because I'm not a big fan of blood cockcles) and few pieces of sliced-up fish balls, that plate of char kuey tiaw had enough "wok hei" to warrant me to order another plate after we finished our food. That's how deprived I was of char kuey tiaw.

Now what is wok hei? Wok hei (in Cantonese) literally translates as qi of the wok. Sounds very zen-nish but this wok hei is the essence of Chinese stir-fry and char kuey tiaw. It's high heat to cook the food in a few stirs of the spatula, and the dish comes up just to the right doneness. Even Kwetiau Akang cannot beat this Kwetiau Kerang Singapore.

Car jockey of a different sort

Every now and then, whenever I make a trip to the wet market in West Jakarta, it is common to see lines of people standing by the roadside, signing "1" with their index fingers. You get to see a lot of these folks especially on roads heading into the CBD area. These are the car jockeys of Jakarta.

In its effort to reduce the number of cars traveling into the CBD area during early morning and after-office rush hours, the local council has come up with this rule that each car needs to have 3 person per car, including the driver. Hence, a new business opportunity sprung up for the ever-entrepreneurial poor Indonesians trying to eke a living in this city.

I've heard about and seen the folks lining up the streets to make a living this way, but have never personally engaged the service of one. Until probably about few weeks ago, when I had to go into the CBD, just me and driver in the evening. Traffic was bad after we dropped Hubs off at Pacific Place, and it was drizzling fast. My driver told me that he needed to pick somebody up because of the rule. And there were hardly any jockeys in sight. I reckoned my driver must be thinking "Should he risk breaking the rule?" until we came upon this boy of probably the age of 11-12 years old.

My driver gestured to the boy to get his attention. And he saw us. We stopped the car and the boy hopped in quickly. And then we continued our journey into the CBD.  Just before we turned off into Plaza Grand Indonesia, my driver stopped the car, paid and dropped the boy off. I asked how much did that cost. My driver paid him Rp 20,000 (roughly RM 6).

I kinda felt sorry for the boy, for I hoped that it was enough for him to get back home. Or maybe he already had more than enough for his young age that day. One will never know. 

Eats: Fusion Italian @ Ocha Bella

My first visit to Ocha Bella is probably one year ago, for drinks at night. All of us had prior dinner elsewhere, which means there were only space for nibbles. Although my memory of that night was rather vague, but I recalled that the food was good.

I had the opportunity to visit Ocha Bella again came when one of Hubs's longtime friend visited and wanted to meet up for dinner on a Friday night. He was staying in Central Jakarta, so naturallly dinner has gotta be somewhere around there to avoid traffic jam. Ocha Bella has a sister restaurant that was opened recently at Plaza Indonesia. We initially wanted to go there but can't secure a table. And that's when Ocha Bella came up. Hubs made a call and we got our table! :)

After picking up Hubs's friend we adjourned to Ocha Bella which turned out to be very near where his friend was staying. Surprisingly, the place isn't as packed as I thought it would be, because most restaurants in Jakarta are almost always fully booked on Friday nights. It's hard to get a table if you walk-in with a group of 4 onwards and even if they are able to sit you in, you gotta vacate the table by 9ish onwards because of a preexisting booking.

Through some social events, Hubs got to know the executive chef of Ocha and he came over to say hi when we were finally seated at our table. He made some recommendations of their specialties, and we left it to him to whip up a selection of their specialty starters and a pizza to share. And as they say, the rest is history as we were immediately transported to gastronomic heaven when the food arrived.

For starters we had pan-seared scallop with some tomato garnish served individually on a potato chip, a sauteed dish of seasonal mushrooms, beef churrasco and pizza of tomato sauce, rocket, ham and mozzarella. The pizza was served last and when we saw all the starters with the pizza, all of us were left wondering if we can finish our mains. However, everything was yummy and with good company, we somehow managed to finish all of it. Regrettably I couldn''t taste the pizza because of my wheat allergy, but trust me I was so tempted to because it looked, smell and according to my fellow tasters, tasted delicious.

For mains, Hubs ordered the aglio olio with angel hair pasta, which according to him was awesome, while I had grilled pork chop that's marinated in a spicy tomato sauce. The pork chop was quite a thick cut but the marination was done very well in such that even the middle portion of the meat was bursting with flavour.

Hubs's friend brought along two of his friends and I requested permission of one to take a photo of her meal. I thought it was an interesting dish because it was baked spaghetti with assorted seafood in a tomato-based sauce. I probably would have ordered this, if it's not because of my wheat allergy. According to her, it was very delicious.

To end my meal, I ordered green ocha to help with the digestion of such an indulgent meal.Of course,  no Italian meal is complete with limoncello served at the end of the meal and I was pleasantly surprised when our waitress served up 5 glasses - compliments of the chef. And of course, I can't help but to take a picture of my final course that night, which I thought represented the restaurant very well. :)

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Ocha Bella
Jl. KH Wahid Hasyim No. 70
Kebon Sirih Menteng Jakarta Pusat