Playing Tourist in Jogjakarta

Been almost half a year since my last visit to Jogja, so my last visit this December-January was quite long. I took 5 days off from the office. Well anyway, it’s quite fun to come back home and playing tourist in my hometown, haha..

I spent my New Year’s eve on Ellen’s home with some old friends and new friends that I’ve first met. But the NYE night was started with a dinner with my family at Holycow steakhouse, our fave restaurant in Jakarta that newly opened in Jogja. Same taste, same price, but different atmosphere and class here. Holycow can be categorized as expensive and elegant dish here in Jogja. Maybe because the place is at a hotel, while it's more like 'warung' in Jakarta. But still, i enjoyed my food so so much. Yum! Happy tummy, happy me! :)

Back in Ellen’s house, we had a random talk and had a beer pong competition! Only saw it on TV series and always curious to do it, and i just did the game! So fun! And to be honest it's hard! Haha.. It looks easy but actually the ball just wouldn’t go to the glass easily. Geez. I paired up with Denis. Won in round 1 but lost in round 2. I ended up drinking 3 glasses and i got hot and red already lol. I really cant drink. :p

I also had a grilled marshmallow. Also a new thing i tried and only saw it in TV series before. Haha. Well actually so many foods provided by Ellen but i couldn’t eat anything more since i got so full in Holycow but i managed to eat a grilled gindara and some marshmallows. Lol. It was such a great night! Basically it’s a night where we allowed to get drunk by the beer pong, and another beer round for the losers of other game. Haha..

First pic of 2014!!!

Did I get skinnier? People said I lost some kgs, and I thought so too. Haha.. I need to get more skinnier this year.

Rain was falling along the first day of 2014! Crazy! So we went to my dad's cemetary at noon. Been exactly 18 years and i feel that it was super long time ago. I don’t really feel dad's existence in my life, i don’t even have any precious memories with him. So yeah, i can say that my mom builds my life, she's the superhero who taught me everything and made me the woman i am today. Maybe we don’t look close to each other but we’re definitely close in our own way. A weird way, haha.

2014 is such a great year to start a new thing and a new experience. Beside the beer pong and grilled marshmallow, I went to Ullen Sentalu Museum for the first time in my life. I stayed in Jogja for more than 10 years but I never visited this museum. So one day I played tourist with my friend, Meme. Too bad she already went there before so I took the tour inside the museum alone. Alone! Between the real tourist group inside. Lol. The admission fee is 30K and the tour takes approx 50 minutes. They also give us a traditional drink for our health.

Inside the museum, it's all about Javanese culture and history specially Jogja and Solo history. Inside there are lots of batik, sculpture, painting and also the portrait of the king, queen, princess and the prince many years ago. There are also many letters from friends and relatives to the brokenhearted princess, and there was one letter that caught my eyes. It said :

“How happy i am to see that light only comes from the darkness and shadows. So does happiness.”

I think it’s a good quotes and also true!

We went to Jejamuran after that trip. I really love to eat there! Jejamuran sells everything mushroom! There are a lot of mushroom dishes they made, from satay, tongseng, crispy mushroom, rendang, soup. Ah, it’s a foodgasm! Not to forget it’s really cheap. It’s a MUST to go there if you’re visiting Jogja.

In my last day in Jogja, I went to Mirota Batik, a place you should go when you're in Jogjakarta, the center of batik, souvenir, stuff, handgift, actually just everything related to Jogja. And today was also my first time to watch the Oyot Godhong cabaret show. It's quite fun and entertaining but the seat was horrible! They should make a proper stage and seat. I posted some videos of them on my dayre. Anyway, we don’t have to give them tip here. Haha. Not like in Thai where the ladyboys are super super materialistic. And also the ticket price is super cheap, 30K for VIP and the regular is 20K. You better get the VIP one or you'll end up sitting in the back with backache.

Well, for me this is quite unique for a performance in Jogja, and maybe the only one in Indo. Never saw another one in Indo before. Haha. So it's kinda nice. Just make sure to come earlier to the venue before you run out of the ticket because every show they only sell 40-50 tickets (if I’m not mistaken). It’s so limited.

I actually love my last visit to Jogja since I tried so many new stuff. I look forward for another exciting new thing and experience in this new year. :)

May everything goes well as His will.

 

xoxo,

Food Journal, Love, Life

I’m too tired to separate my blog entry into one tiny story, so I will just combine it all together. Haha. So, it’s gonna be a long post again. There’s nothing new in my life in the past couple weeks. I went eat a lot, made a documentation of the foods I ate, which is actually the point of this blog post. Sometimes I feel like I’m kinda ‘alay’ to snap all of those foods one by one, lol, except maybe it’s what those food journalists and critics do.

See, the problem in my life is that I love food so much, but in contrary I committed myself into some so called diet named OCD which forbids me to eat a lot and often. Well, I’m not that committed actually, I cheated a lot. Haha. But people said I got more skinnier lately that’s why I don’t want to leave the OCD, so I still do it but not regularly. I’m planning to do it again daily so it will cut off some of my fats more. I heard and read that OCD is somehow bad for your health because when you don’t eat in a long time, your body doesn’t produce the insulin hormone, and when you eat it will produce. The extreme condition when the insulin level in a low period and then suddenly goes high, this can make you get a diabetes, people said. But what happen when Moslems are fasting, they do the exact same thing, so it means that fasting is not good? But I’ve read that fasting is actually good, well maybe not for your whole life. I’ve searched some other method for diet called 5:2 diet, so you have 5 days to eat like you usually do, and the rest 2 days you have to cut off your meals into 1/4 of your regular meal. So a woman like me needs 2000 calories in a day, I can have it in that 5 days, but for the other 2 days I can only eat 500 calories per day. That’s the rule. But how am I supposed to count every calories I eat when I don’t have a diet catering or a personal trainer or a chef to cook for me?! Haha. It just really hard and I have to spend too much effort on that. :| Anyway, what kind of stupid people who wants to make a food journal but afraid to get fat?? Well, I guess it’s me. Lol. I’m definitely jealous of all the people who can’t get any bigger no matter how much they eat.

3 weeks ago I went to Dian’s wedding party in Bogor and I got the chance to meet my old friends there. Friends from university and also from my high school. Yup, Dian went to the same high school and uni with me so we kinda know each other quite long. Well, they aren’t really change at all, still the same shape, the same language, the same style. But I was glad to meet them, kinda bring me to the old good memories when I didn’t need to be stressful about work because I got a great job as a basketball manager back there in university, something I loved to do. Well, I ate Dead by chocolate cake at Dead By Chocolate café in Bogor, which is taste pretty good. It looks like a lava cake except that it’s square and the melted chocolate doesn’t come out from the inside because it’s actually put in the layers of the cake. The cake itself tastes really sweet like almost too sweet for some people (lucky I am a big fan of chocolate), but the vanilla ice cream is actually balancing the sweetness of the cake. Too bad it melted too quick and they didn’t give enough ice cream for that big cake. I also bought lots of ‘roti unyil’ (some bread specialties from Bogor), but I couldn’t stand the queue. Ugh.

Anyway, congratulation to Dian & Warta, may you both have a great future life and a wonderful family and live happily ever after. God bless! :)

I really love the dress I wore that day, it’s simply the best buy of the year. Here I give you the big picture. I bought the dress like months ago and never worn it because there wasn’t any occasion for that. I love the printing on that dress sooo much, and also it has a low back cut. Well, why I told you that it’s a best buy dress? Because I bought it in a half price sale and it’s less than 400K! *big grin*

     ootd : Dress | Suite Blanco || Shoes | Bershka

2 weeks ago I went to Grand Indonesia for another Saturdate with of course the two and only Julia and Evan, my two single friends. Haha. Yeah, we’re not desperate single people, we’re so ready to mingle, except where are the guys?! More about this later in this post, hehe.. We had dinner in Ninety Nine, my plan to had cheap dinner was failed. Ugh. And I was disappointed with the service in Ninety Nine, they are quite famous and expensive restaurant but the waiter that served us that night was a bad ass. He wasn’t a trainee but he was really dumb not to put my order in the computer. He also didn’t know the name of some menus, gave us wrong name. It wasn’t really crowded that night but they were really lame. Fortunately I had the courage to ask them about my dish and he just realized that he didn’t put it up in the system. Unbelievable. Well, luckily what I ate that night had a good taste. I love the mashed potatoes in my dori fillet, it blends perfectly with the lemon sauce. The dori fillet is fried with almond coat and it tastes good too! Big enough for dinner course. My ice lemon is so refreshing, worth to try! My friends ordered the regular dishes like salmon fried rice and babi rica-rica (pork) fried rice. The salmon fried rice however is delicious. It’s just too ordinary for a 86K meal. The cake in the picture is banana caramel cake, not a big fan of banana so I can’t really commented on it, but my friend said it taste so-so.

 

We tried this nitrogen ice cream for dessert time. It’s a new place in Grand Indonesia, named Ron’s Laboratory. Well, it’s now a mainstream dish just like bubble tea or red velvet, people are curious about the nitrogen ice cream. While actually I don’t know how the nitrogen has a thing to do with the gelato. Perhaps it’s the smoke in the production area? The decoration for the kitchen is actually quite unique with the drawing at the glass and the chalkboard, but they didn’t put enough chair for the customer. It was a full packed inside on that day and people didn’t suppose to stay too long there. The waiters also dress up like a laboratory worker and use a goggle too so it’s really unique. Anyway I tried the dark chocolate one (of course) and my friend tried the avocado. Well, it’s a 3 scoops ice cream with not so fabulous taste, so 50K is expensive enough, right? Lucky we came in the opening season so we got 20% discount. And by the way, the ice cream melted very fast. Don’t know if it’s because of the nitrogen factor or not. Anyway they have coffee and sorbet too, haven’t tried it yet though.

The last couple weeks, I’ve been treated a very good lunch. Went to Crab Paradise with my boss and my customers, it said they are the real authentic Thai food. So I’m really curious to try the curry crab, I expect it to be as good as the crab I ate at Kodang Talay, but it turned me down. It’s just really different, too much spices, too much curry, it tasted like a curry only. We tried the fish cake like in the picture below and it’s a lil cold and not soft, too dry, I don’t know, I just don’t like it. We ordered a seafood hotplate in order to buy some vegetable, but what we got was bloody much squids and prawns and another seafood without much vegetables inside, just see the pic below and you’ll understand. However, I like the cumi telor asin and cumi saos pedas, they tasted perfectly salty and spicy, love love it. The kepiting saos Asia pedas was actually good too, the sauce was much better than the curry sauce. Anyway we also ordered the tom yum, what’s the meaning of eating in Thai restaurant without a tom yum right? Well, for me personally it is too sour, I still prefer the tomyum in Mama’s Kitchen Mangga Dua. Overall, Crab Paradise is kinda like a family restaurant and the place is also really big for an office event or family event.

If you go to Marugame Udon in Mal Taman Anggrek, you will definitely eat a bowl of udon with maybe some tempura to accompany the udon. I’ve ordered a bowl once (forgot the name) but it tasted good. I like it. Well, couple weeks ago we tried the super big bowl. It’s not even a bowl actually, it’s kinda like a giant bamboo basket with udon inside it. Luckily u can ask your friends to eat that together because it’s seriously super large. The udon itself already had the salty taste but they gave us the broth with ginger which I initially thought as garlic, stupid me. So then I put it all and it taste like ginger, hell yeah. Lol. But it still tasted good actually. This super big basket is only 85K and you can share it with 5 people. I shared that it with 4 people and I was more than full. Worth to try the sensation! Haha.

Lobstar! Finally, I got the chance to taste the grilled lobster which I’m really curious about. I really want to try Loobie Lobster at the first place but my friends kept telling me that this one tastes the same and much cheaper than Loobie. So last week we had our lunch there, I ordered the whole platter for me and my friend. It consists of two little lobsters and fried calamari with rice and sambal. First, the plus point of Lobstar is that they have so many choices of sambal like sambal korek, sambal matah, sambal dabu-dabu, etc. And I can’t choose another sambal than korek. Now for the taste, I think they put too much butter in the lobster so it just tastes like a butter, and it’s hard to eat lobster with spoon and fork anyway. I couldn’t really eat the head part of the lobster too even when I used my hand. The calamary wasn’t really crispy and tasted like flour, this is the effect of watching Masterchef where there was fried calamary pressure test and the contestants failed. I mean, it’s as simple as fried calamary but turn out it’s hard to deep fried it and still make it tasty. As for the sambal korek, wasn’t really spicy for me and more sweet. Not good at all. Overall the taste of the lobster is so-so with kinda acceptable price. 95K for the whole platter and 60K for the half platter. They also have another combo that gives you dori fish and giant prawn. For now I’m just really curious about Loobie Lobster, I want to try the original one.

For some cheap weekend dinner, we went to Nasi Gila Gondrong last week. It’s super super cheap like only 15K and tasted really good. Nasi gila is the mix of sausage, meat, meatball, egg, with spicy sauce specially for me and some kerupuk. It is good, you should try! But beware, don’t choose another number, choose Nasi Gila 81 Gondrong. This foodtruck is at Jalan Besuki near Taman Menteng and open after 6pm. But late night they maybe move to Taman Suropati, so look carefully. I really couldn’t have enough of it, in fact I miss this food already!

         ootd : Sweater | Cloth Inc || Skirt | Pull and Bear || Wedges | Bershka || Necklace | F21 ||

I really love this yellow sweater and I don’t know why. I’ve worn it like 4 times in a month. Haha. Do I look fat in that oversized sweater? Because sometimes I think I do. Well, talk about the love for the food, I think it’s quite long since I talk about my love life. No, I still don’t have a boyfriend right now :( , but I think I’m open to some possibilities. I find that man now is becoming more interesting than ever and I’m ready to begin a new relationship. Ahaa! Yup, I’m finally and completely moved on from him. Yay!! It was already quite long time actually, right after the dream of another man at one night. I was shocked that I can dream of another man when in fact I never had any contact with this man in couple months and he’s my friend and he has a girlfriend in real life, so there’s no way I will be with him, like ever. But he got into my dream! And it was the turning point. I dreamt about my ex earlier and it made me super confused about my feelings because I did hope too much. But then I realized that the dream was meaningless (since I could dream about another man), I just thought too much about it and it made me embarrassing and humiliating myself AGAIN in front of him. Like I made some stupid confessions that I was still into him for a year even though we had no contact. Like, really?! What was on your head?!? My friend told me that what’s supposed to go, you can’t hold it. Just let it go and believe that I deserve someone who appreciates me. Thank God I’m finally realizing my stupidity this whole time. :)

Well, I hope you enjoy this super long post with my nonstop rambling. Haha. Till I write again! Ciao! ;)

____________________________________________________

Ninety Nine : Grand Indonesia Shopping Town, East Mall, LG Floor, Jl. M.H. Thamrin No. 1, Jakarta.

Ron’s Laboratory : Grand Indonesia Shopping Town, West Mall, 5th Floor – ED2-12B, Jl. M.H. Thamrin No. 1, Jakarta.

Crab Paradise : Komplek Greenville, Jl. Ratu Kemuning Blok BK No. 1, Jakarta Barat.

Marugame Udon : Mall Taman Anggrek, 3rd Floor.

Lobstar : Komplek Greenville, Jl. Mangga Raya Blok H No. 1B, Jakarta Barat.

 

xoxo,

Food Journal : Moovina

It was another Saturdate dinner with Akun and Jubel. I actually needed to go to some ordinary place but they took me here instead! Moovina. Yup, this is another fine dining kind of restaurant with a lounge inside too, it’s in Plaza Indonesia. Moovina is basically divided into 2 floors, the upper part is Mezzanine @Moovina, it’s darker and more like a lounge with a bar area, they also have the smoking area here, and a private room to gather with your friends. It’s more modern with open kitchen concept. The lower part is Dolce Moovina, this is the one for fine dining, more cozy I guess because it has a garden theme, just really nice. They have an outdoor area also but I didn’t see it at that time.

When you see how the waiter and waitress serve, you’ll notice that it’s kinda a high class restaurant, the way they treat you is different. The uniform is nice. They were actually slow at first, they didn’t bring us the menu until I called them first. I don’t know if they didn’t see us because it was really dark or what, because we were taken to the table by one of the staff, then why didn’t she take our order too? Well after that they were just really helpful though. Helping us nonstop with our photo session. Lol.

Our orders were Chicken Cordon Bleu with Aglio Olio Spaghetti, Jon Dory Fish with Mashed Potato and broccoli, and also an Apple Pie for dessert. For a recap : it’s SO-SO. My chicken is not worthy for that expensive price. It’s just as same as 40K cordon bleu, really. And my spaghetti was really salty. Even though I love salty food, it’s just felt too much. And some of them felt like a lil bit uncooked. I don’t know. The dory my friend ate was good enough but not special, the broccoli was tasteless. I liked the apple pie though, not overcooked and not too oily, the caramel is not really sweet.

They actually have many choices of fine dining menu, start from 60K to 500K, with the choice of steak, wine, cocktail. It’s a perfect western and international dinner for you who love it. Don’t forget to make a reservation before, because it can be real full in the weekend. Eventhough Moovina has a really big space, I couldn’t find a non-smoking seat last Saturday. Well, maybe a seat at the lower floor will be better. Overall it’s a nice place. But will I come back here again? Maybe, for the atmosphere, not for the food.

   *below picture is taken from berrybenka.com

If you see my picture above, I feel like I’m skinnier now (yay!). See my thigh there, feel like SNSD’s thigh huh? lol. But my cheek cant lie, it will not get less chubby. :(

Moovina : Plaza Indonesia 3rd & 4th Floor #06 || Ph. 021 2992 4567, 021 2992 3999.

 

xoxo,

Food Journal : Le Quartier

Finally! I’m back again with some food journals. Recently I’ve been going to some fine dining places with my besties, 3 single people going on a saturdate night! Is it sound sad or relieving? Haha. I went to some awesome restaurant or café actually but I didn’t think to blog about it since I’ve been in a long hiatus period here, so there are no pictures and it will be not interesting to tell, so I’m gonna pass but I will snap more pictures after today.

My first review is gonna be Le Quartier, a French Restaurant in Gunawarman street, right beside Loobie Lobster (which I really want to try!). Alright2, focus on the subject! We actually wanted to go to Altitude but then some bad reviews made us change our mind. After some debate we decided to go to Le Quartier (I am a hyperbolic), which was turned out to be a great idea because the food was delicious! I’m not a food critic but I do love good food! Well, the bad thing about Saturday night here is that it was fully reserved, so we didn’t get the table. We ended up sitting at the bar that wasn’t really comfortable to eat. I googled some about this restaurant and they actually have a very unique painted wall there and I didn’t have the chance to take a picture of it.

So what we ate that night was a stone-baked pizza for the appetizer. We ordered white ham and truffle. It is a thin pizza with a lot of pork meat at the top (you can see the picture, I aint lie when I said LOT), a very tasty mozarella (I could feel it melting in my mouth) and there’s green pea pesto under the pork which is perfectly seasoned and also pine nuts. Well, I didn’t taste the truffle though. But I think it was the best pizza I’ve ever tasted. Of course with quite high price. For the main course we ordered an angel’s hair aglio olio with grilled prawn, seared baramundi with lemon butter sauce, and a grilled double chicken breast. The aglio olio was super tasty, but I think they used too much oil in the plate so it’s kinda too wet for me. But it tasted good and spicy (actually spicy means tasty for me, lol). And I got lil surprised because actually the pasta didn’t have any topping, I paid extra 50K for that 3 prawns! ugh! Or else you can choose chicken for the topping. Haha. The seared baramundi was damn good too. I tried a lil and everything tasted in perfect balance. Will order it again for myself next time. The breast chicken was just another chicken. Nothing’s really special about it, except the super size. Actually it’s a bit tasteless without the blackpepper sauce, and it’s originally came without sauce.

Beside the dinner menu, they also have a breakfast and lunch menu! So great right? They also have a great service. Just don’t forget to do the advance booking, specially in the primetime.

    ootd : tanktop | F21, short | Zara, blazer | Zara (similar), shoes | Bershka

Le Quartier : Jalan Gunawarman No. 34, Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta Selatan ||

Ph. 021-72788001

 

Solo Culinary Day

I went to Solo yesterday, culinary all day long, visited some eating spots there. Me n friends went in the morning and our first place was Diamond. We ate dimsum for breakfast. Just like Quality Hotel, they gave 50% discount in spot. I was suppa full after this. Haha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we went to my favorite culinary spot in solo, BATAGOR MANG EDHIE!! They said the batagor was originally from Bandung. I love it bcos it tastes like batagor2 in Bandung, so yeah, since it’s too far away to eat batagor in Bandung, i definitely will eat this everytime i go to Solo. Very2 recommended!! :)

Third round was J-cool ing. I was really full so we decided to walkin around before eat our next food. Hahaha..

Round 4 was eating Bebek Hj Slamet. Actually we have the same restaurant here in Jogja, but people said it tastes different. So i cant miss it. Basically it tasted the same as here, but we got it more crunchy and i think the ‘sambel’ was more spicy there.

Next round, we went to one hangout spot called Rocketz. It’s pretty cool place but i think it’s very dark. I love the live band but we left pretty fast. The drinks are quite expensive, it’s above 20K. I was really full so i only ordered Choco Rocketz.

When u go to Solo, u cant miss the Keraton if u wanna have culture trip. My friends bought a lot of Pia Balong at Sumber Rejeki and also some breads in Orion.

Had a lot of fun there! and of course lot of food too! I think i got my weight increased. Damn!! lol.

 

xoxo,

Food Journal : Yo Cafe

Back with food journal.. I tried new cafe in my town, named Yo Cafe. It is placed in the new Graha Natasha Skin Care, at Jalan Kaliurang Yogyakarta. Basically, they provide light meals, like snacks, beverages, pastries, and lot of desserts!! :D

I ordered lots of dessert yesterday, but my favorite is chocolate truffle!! It’s sooo chocolate :) the cake is more like mousse, because really2 soft. But i loveeee this one..

Eclair, with pisthacios at the top.

American Chocolate Cake, tastes almost like chocolate truffle.

Orange Charlotte, tastes fresh. The cake is a bit sour.

Mango Pudding, the pudding is more like mousse, with slices of mango at the top.  

Black Russian, this cake consist of vodka, so i dont really like eating this too much. But if u like something different, u should try this.

Spinach beef Quiche, tastes really good!! My favorite for the pastries!!

For the beverages, we ordered Orange Peach juice and Tropical Tea. The orange in orange peach juice isnt really tasty, only slice of orange at the top. And the tropical tea is more like passion fruit for me :D

 

Beside the order, they also offer beverage like coffee or latte, and also pasta for eat. Quite good for a new cafe.

xoxo,

Food Journal : Musiro

I’ve been lacked of post, cos i got no internet. My modem has reached its active time. So yeah, i must fill a credit in order to use it again.

Back to the food journal, i just visited a Korean Fusion Restaurant called, MUSIRO. It’s new I guess, about a month.. And the owner is a real Korean woman. The place is quite small, with a minimalist interior, full of Korean band posters. They also play Korean songs inside. And the utensils are really like the real one in Korea.

Well, i was trying UDONG, korean noodle with a crab stick. A lil bit tasteless, because no chili there, so i must added lots of chili and blackpepper for some taste. We also ordered TOPPOKI and CHEESE TOPPOKI, i just felt it was like flour u know, with Korean sauce, taste lil bit spicy, but the toppoki itself is tasteless too. Not my favorite one. There’s MINI GIMBAB, a lil look like sushi, with egg wraps it. The last menu i tried was BULLDAK BBQ, korean fried rice wraped with egg, and also Korean sauce with slice of chickens. Taste good. I’m interested on trying bulgogi steak and la galbi on my next visit. Haha.. Well, u can see the price list at the pic above.

MUSIRO is at : Jalan Gejayan Yogyakarta (beside Swiss House Bakery), open daily from 10 am to 10 pm.

xoxo,