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BUZZ RESTAURANT, ALILA, JAKARTA
| PLANET FOOD
Buzz Restaurant at the Alila Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia
Business travel often means bland dishes served up in the hotel restaurant. Not if you’re staying at the Alila Jakarta, where the chef at Buzz Restaurant will have you blurring the lines between business and pleasure.
Text Bridget McNulty
Photography Mark Peddle
You’ll know as soon as you walk into Buzz Restaurant that this is no ordinary business hotel restaurant. There’s atmosphere, for starters. The décor is simple and stylish, all right angles in neutral tones, set off by the bright splashes of colour on every chair. Hanging lamps make spots of light on each table, and the laidback lounge music signals that now is the time to unwind. It’s a relaxed atmosphere, the kind of place you can catch your breath and indulge in some truly superb food.
Because, really, that’s the best part about Buzz at the Alila Jakarta. Yes, the staff are excellent, the music is great, and the vibe is relaxed. But the food will keep you coming back for more. Chef I Nengah Suradnya spent twenty years working in Australia before returning home to Indonesia, where he’s brought his talent for fusion food to life. We tested out his 2010 menu, which was fresh and surprising, a real treat for the senses.
We started with a beautiful cut of fresh salmon, topped with coriander and avocado salsa, and dressed with a balsamic reduction. The salmon was tender and juicy, falling off the fork; perfectly cooked. The first flavour to come through was the clean salmon, fast followed by the tangy tomato and onion of the salsa, the sweet balsamic and the sharp vinaigrette sauce, and finally ending with the subtle creamy avo. A superbly put-together dish, the kind you want to eat one slow mouthful at a time, so that it never ends.
This was followed by a deliciously modern take on chicken curry – a perfectly roasted chicken breast in a pool of fragrant light yellow curry yoghurt, topped by a sweet and spicy mango chutney and offset by three tender stems of asparagus. It was an ideal proportion of spice to flavour, not too overwhelming and with the sweet chutney to end off each mouthful.
And then came dessert! A quartet of the strangest ice-creams I’ve ever tasted – basil, chilli, cardamom and passionfruit. The passionfruit was fruity and full-flavoured, a really lovely closure to the spicy curry flavours. This was followed by the surprisingly delicious basil ice-cream, delicate and sweet, with none of the punch that basil has when combined with tomato. The cardamom ice-cream was cinnamony and light, but the chilli ice-cream won the prize for the most surprising (although not the most palatable.) Somehow the chef has created a contradiction – ice-cold creamy texture with all the fire of a steaming hot curry. Not for the faint-hearted! We also had a less exciting but extremely delicious lemon confit: fresh and fruity, with a perfectly smooth consistency, sweet but not overwhelming.
Taken together, these three courses made up a truly delicious meal, highly recommended for anyone traveling on business (or pleasure) in Indonesia’s capital city. There was also a buffet dinner option, with everything from meat to soups, bread, sushi and pasta. But it seems a shame, when there’s a chef like I Nengah Suradnya in the kitchen, to have anything but fresh and flavourful, straight off the menu.
We walked into Buzz tired and worn out after a busy day; we left buzzing.
Back to Alila Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia
Because, really, that’s the best part about Buzz at the Alila Jakarta. Yes, the staff are excellent, the music is great, and the vibe is relaxed. But the food will keep you coming back for more. Chef I Nengah Suradnya spent twenty years working in Australia before returning home to Indonesia, where he’s brought his talent for fusion food to life. We tested out his 2010 menu, which was fresh and surprising, a real treat for the senses.
We started with a beautiful cut of fresh salmon, topped with coriander and avocado salsa, and dressed with a balsamic reduction. The salmon was tender and juicy, falling off the fork; perfectly cooked. The first flavour to come through was the clean salmon, fast followed by the tangy tomato and onion of the salsa, the sweet balsamic and the sharp vinaigrette sauce, and finally ending with the subtle creamy avo. A superbly put-together dish, the kind you want to eat one slow mouthful at a time, so that it never ends.
This was followed by a deliciously modern take on chicken curry – a perfectly roasted chicken breast in a pool of fragrant light yellow curry yoghurt, topped by a sweet and spicy mango chutney and offset by three tender stems of asparagus. It was an ideal proportion of spice to flavour, not too overwhelming and with the sweet chutney to end off each mouthful.
And then came dessert! A quartet of the strangest ice-creams I’ve ever tasted – basil, chilli, cardamom and passionfruit. The passionfruit was fruity and full-flavoured, a really lovely closure to the spicy curry flavours. This was followed by the surprisingly delicious basil ice-cream, delicate and sweet, with none of the punch that basil has when combined with tomato. The cardamom ice-cream was cinnamony and light, but the chilli ice-cream won the prize for the most surprising (although not the most palatable.) Somehow the chef has created a contradiction – ice-cold creamy texture with all the fire of a steaming hot curry. Not for the faint-hearted! We also had a less exciting but extremely delicious lemon confit: fresh and fruity, with a perfectly smooth consistency, sweet but not overwhelming.
Taken together, these three courses made up a truly delicious meal, highly recommended for anyone traveling on business (or pleasure) in Indonesia’s capital city. There was also a buffet dinner option, with everything from meat to soups, bread, sushi and pasta. But it seems a shame, when there’s a chef like I Nengah Suradnya in the kitchen, to have anything but fresh and flavourful, straight off the menu.
We walked into Buzz tired and worn out after a busy day; we left buzzing.
Back to Alila Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia
FIVE QUICK QUESTIONS WITH CHEF NENGAH SURADNYA:
After twenty years working in restaurants around Australia, Nengah Suradnya has returned home to Indonesia to cook up Indonesian fusion delights for the patrons of Buzz Restaurant. His experience in Modern Australian Cuisine has seen him in the kitchens of the Park Hyatt, the Tryst Restaurant, the Rocksalt Restaurant, and the Peppered Prawn, all in Canberra. Between 2004 and 2007, he owned his own restaurant, Element, where he cooked up degustation feasts and won the award for Best New Restaurant in 2005. We tear him away from the Buzz kitchen for a few questions.
1. What makes Buzz different?
It’s a very comfortable restaurant. We’re not trying to be pretentious. We offer good food and good service – you can see what the chef is doing in the open kitchen, it’s good honest food.
2. How does being in a hotel affect Buzz?
We are trying to do the best we can for our guests. One of my experiences is that you can’t please everybody, but we try hard and we seem to be doing well – we haven’t heard anybody complain!
3. What’s your favourite dish to cook?
My own style – a fusion mix of my own flavours. Chefs cook by heart, sometimes, you imagine what the food will look like on the plate, what it will taste like, and then try to create that. You have to be very patient.
4. What’s your favourite dish to eat?
Being honest here, I’d have to say home cooking! Traditional food cooked at home. I suppose it’s because while I was in Australia I wanted a taste of home. When you come back to your own country, you can see how different the food style is in Indonesia. Like the people say, a bird will always come back to its nest.
5. What direction do you think food is going in Indonesia?
There are a lot of different kinds of food in our generation. Restaurants are trying to follow Western style in some way, introducing fusion multicultural food, in response to all the chain restaurants that have opened recently. I’m quite surprised, actually, we seem to be reaching international standards here in Indonesia. It’s an exciting time.
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