I was supposed to book something else in Jakarta, I think it was near Grand Indonesia.

But then my boss recommended this and I saw it was a lot cheaper, at around PHP 2,370 a night. There was no question about it so I booked it. It was in front of Sarinah, Jakarta’s first department store, ergo, I will not run out of food options.

Durian Writer told me to take a selfie infront of it because it was the scene of the Jakarta bombings a few years back.

Anyway, Artotel in Thamrin is comfortable enough, the room was much bigger than anything else I book in Singapore, and has decent Internet connection (around 20+ Mbps). It poses as an art gallery/hotel and it has murals done by up and coming local artists.

The food though is… Any breakfast buffet without bacon in my book is a fail. That’s it. Since everything in Jakarta is halal, I couldn’t expect to have babi/baboy which is why my diet the past three days consisted of ayam (chicken) and veggies.

The food I had the past three days lacked the umami flavor that I favor so much. Yes, Indonesian food is spicy because they love putting so much crushed chili but I found myself always reaching for the soy sauce and black pepper.

The style of nasi padang is to serve everything on the table. But of course my colleagues and I did not eat everything. You only get charged for the ones you pick/touch. So I think they make money off people who have bigger eyes than their stomachs as they would be dipping into every dish on the table “just to try”. They will end up paying for everything.

I just ate beef rendang, jackfruit curry (like ginataang langka), and a vegetable dish that is a bunch of leaves that was blanched and it tasted like lagundi leaves. I liked the rendang.

The other day we ate near Sarinah and I ordered gado-gado (because this dish has been advertised to me by Durian Writer so many times) and satay, just to compare the Singaporean one. My colleague boasted that Indonesian satay is the best (of course you should love thy own) but unfortunately I liked the Singaporean version grilled near Lau Pasat every night. The Indonesian satay is covered in so much yellow sauce that didn’t help in flavoring the meat itself (which is, of course, ayam) I liked the gado-gado, which is a dish composed of kropek, fried tofu, veggies, sambal and some stuff I no longer remember.

I had this blueberry vanilla milkshake when we were in Markette in Grand Indonesia for a meeting.

All in all, my travel food is not a success. I may have better luck the next time around.