Seroeni: Spice does matter

Food enthusiasts in town now have a new gastronomic experience to check out: Seroeni. The restaurant has just opened and it's serving up traditional home-style Chinese Malay cuisine.

One unique aspect of Seroeni's Chinese Malay recipes is the fact that many of them are originally Chinese dishes cooked using Malay and Indian spices such as balacan (belacan) and made into curries.

Seroeni co-owner David Setiawan says his company decided to open the restaurant because he was unable to find another outlet serving Chinese Malay food in Indonesia.

"There are Chinese Indonesian res-taurants, but there were no Chinese Malay ones. We chose the Chinese Malay cuisine we found in Penang, Malaysia, because this region has a rich variety of traditional Chinese, Indian and Malay cuisine," he said.

To maintain the authenticity of its dishes, Seroeni hired its chef, Bob, from Penang, Malaysia, and imports all of its spices from that region. Some of the spices it imports are black pepper, sauce, kecap pekat (black soy sauce) and tepung kanji (starch).

"Indonesia and Malaysia are neighboring countries and their cuisines taste only slightly different. We use local ingredients but with imported spices. If we used local spices the flavors would be similar to local cuisine. We avoid that," David said.

To speed up their cooking process, Seroeni uses pre-mixed sauces and prepares sauce-based foods, such as Shark's Fin Soup, Fried Mee Mamak and Malay Sambal, in its main kitchen in Semarang, Central Java.

As their menu is around 60 percent sauce-based dishes, David said, Seroeni is planning to open a main kitchen in Jakarta and two new outlets in the capital in the next six months.

"We are hoping to open one outlet at Plaza Indonesia shopping mall in Central Jakarta and one in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta," he said.

Seroeni's use of imported spices and specialized cooking style keeps its cuisine authentic, but David acknowledges that they have had to change their flavors slightly to accommodate Indonesian tastes.

When their chef visited Semarang, he went to various restaurants there to learn how the locals cooked, David said. Bob later concluded that Semarang people liked to have their foods sweet. Adapting to this, he increased the sweetness of their dishes by up to 15 percent.

"We also did the same for Jakarta. Since we are still in our soft launch, we will monitor customers' responses over the next couple of weeks," he said.

The menu includes soup, rice, noodle, fish and prawn dishes. If soup is your preference, Shark's Fin Soup or Beef Egg Drop Soup are both good options, since both are delicious and best consumed hot.

Seroeni's dishes come in medium-sized portions best enjoyed between friends or families. For example, Crispy Longan Beef would be the perfect dish for a main course, with its fresh longan (lychee) complementing juicy sweet beef strips. If you like that, you may also like another juicy sweet dish, Honey Vinegar Chicken.

David says the best-selling dishes in Semarang are Sweet and Spicy Prawn and Fried Mee Mamak, and this is no surprise because both are delicious.

But save some space for dessert - there's a bowl of shaved ice called Snow Monster. This comes in several flavors, for example milk or green tea, and has various choices of toppings including fruit and chocolate chips.

Unlike the other shaved ice, Snow Monster does not give you a "brain freeze". It melts and slides on your tongue like raindrops falling off the roof.

The humble Seroeni (chrysanthemum) restaurant has a wood-colored interior and has rows of tables at its center and smaller tables on its sides.

However, finding this restaurant can be a bit tricky because its sign (overhead) is not as obvious as its showcase dishes such as Snow Monster at eye level.

Plaza Senayan Level 3, Unit 338B Jl. Asia Afrika No.8 Senayan, Jakarta

Phone: (021) 572 5187

Source : The Jakarta Post