At the start of the 14th century, Indonesia's King Hayam Wuruk would embark on royal journeys throughout his kingdom, visiting important ports of call and Silk Route towns. "Royal journeys" would be the officially stoic, bureaucratic term - what these really were were culinary expeditions of opulent proportions. Each taking up to 10 months to complete, and escorted by hundreds of troops, palace maids, horses, elephants and carriages, five important ceremonies also accompanied each audaciously over-indulgent odyssey.
First, a pre-expedition feast with the finest cuisine by the imperial kitchen was hosted as the send-off party. Next, the king would sample the distinct gastronomy of each district - not region, not state, not province, not town. District. Then, banquets would be presented by the local villagers after temple rituals. On the return journey, the same villagers served up an even more lavish ceremonial degustation when the king came by again. Finally, back in the palace, a blessing ceremony with more noshing was held to herald the safe royal return.
All this surveying of the land, frankly, makes Zagat look like a playground straw poll. To cover all this ground, King Hayam needed to travel across 17,508 islands in his archipelago state, all offering distinct spices which in turn led to an unthinkable variety of platter matters. It's no accident, but a compliment, that Indonesian cuisine is all about deliberate Machiavellian techniques of contrasting flavors (spicy, sour, sweet, hot) and textures (wet, coarse, spongy, hard, clingy, rich, thick, thin, wobbly, cloying), each playing savors against other flavors. In a country where Hinduism meets Islam and wealth never encounters poverty, it always takes two tastes to tantalize: cardamom and chilis, tamarind and tumeric, saffron and serai, ginger and galanggal, cloves and cumin. Sadly, this diversity - normally a beautiful thing - also reflects the disparate and warring natures of some territories against the ruling Javanese peninsula - you are what you eat.
The Malaku, Indonesia's Spice Islands, were the center of the world spice trade in the 16th and 17th century, so after you toss in some Portuguese and Dutch colonialism for good measure, into that melting entrepot of international exchanges - a very grandiose version of the town hall pot luck - you get what eventually morphed into rijstafel, Dutch for "rice table" (or "smorgasbord," if you were an indignant indigenous annoyed at the glorified adaptation of nasi padang). Ironically, the epicurean extravaganzas laid before King Hayam were probably more rijstafel than nasi padang - like all bourgeois injustices, what was fit for the palatial pleasure of royalty overshadowed the humility of the minangkabu's daily staples and instead was more aligned with the dining practices of future colonial masters.
Which is pretty much the experience at Lara Djonggrang, a beautiful restaurant named for a mystical princess in the wealthy southern part of Jakarta, but also a respite from the traffic, smog and relentless and endless concrete with its setting in a 200-year-old temple amid a lush and verdant garden, filled with antiques. Can this be real? By serving "Imperial Indonesian Cuisine," you feel rather removed from the makeshift wooden carts on flat rubber tires on the streets. Which is the real Indonesian cuisine, this authentic and loyal recreation of King Hayam's experiences, or that soto ayam (spicy chicken soup) in a cracked bowl with a buzzing fly on top? I'll tell you what - take them all, because you can. Megalomaniac it.
Here in Lara Djonggrang, as a Buddha watches you out of the corner of his eye to your left and Shiva glares down on your right, the superfluously sprawling menu is a literal rijstafel. Like an imperial edict, it beseeches, challenges and, you hope, orders you to eat everything in it. Very telling are the long descriptions accompanying each dish - the menu is sectioned off into appropriate courses, and even sate (satay) and krupuk (crackers) get their own spotlight. Actually, that's insulting. Nothing served here is a dish. Everything is a platter and even more than that, everything is a presentation. Fragrant coconut rice shaped like wayang kulit (local puppets) while adorned with bits of banana leaves and flowers. A bit of a schtick to some, but then again, a peaceful garden setting in Jakarta is also quite the fantasy.
Eat, eat more, pray.
If the spices that inspire such cuisine is why the Dutch made Indonesia an important port in their spice trade, then they really have outdone themselves. I promise you that this heat-filled hedonism outperforms any of the herbs in Amsterdam, and you don't need to put on a lubricated latex cover to take in this oral pleasure.
So, let's not keep the Lara legacy waiting.
In the beginning, there was "Sate Daging Manis Kota Gede" (I do feel like I need to narrate the name of each platter like it was a work of artistic mastery - which they all are), grilled caramel-marinated tenderloin served with cucumber salad and red pepper, tomato and shrimp paste on the side. The recipe originated from a street vendor in Kota Gede, Jogjakarta during the earlier part of the 20th century, although I highly doubt that hawker was slicing up prime meat to sell on a stick. But, he might have if he was serving it to the king. I love satay, mainly because it's the only time you can get away with eating the worst possible meat castaways saturated in sweetness and grilled till the fat is charred. But this - if you ever felt that it was an insult to dice up great steak, then you need to unsheath one of these skewers from the large conch shell it's served in and keep it in your mouth for a bit while the most playful juices run down your throat.
Meat on a stick in a shell.
While masticulating on this fine specimen of grilled meat, tender to the tongue, we munched on "Krupuk Tempeh," thin crackers made from soy beans with bitterness playing along the edges deep-fried to a crisp. You dip this into the spiciest sambal belacan (fermented shrimp paste with chili) and let your palate play with fire. It's one of those instances when you have to live on the edge, even as crumbs make cliffhangers of the front of your clothes.
I've got a hunch that the world needs crunch.
The first of our two entrees was "Bebek Betutu," a famous Gianyan dish of a whole tender duck cooked in traditional Balinese spices for at least 24 hours. There's no foul play on this fowl - there is no way on earth you can replicate how a duck stewed for one day and one night can fall off its bones seamlessly while carrying the intensity of each flavor instilled into its being. The web of bones can be intricate, so you have to navigate your way through the bird - this makes it even more flavorful as you open up each new section of the meat storing all these wonderful essences.
Righteously fowl play.
A spotlight-stealing sideshow.
The second was "Buntut Sapi Bungkus Daun Pandan," beef oxtail marinated in eight spices and wrapped in pandan leaves before grilled to silky, clingy, moisturized nirvana. This platter was a Shakespearan play in five pieces of oxtail - "Hamlet," I'd say, although there was nothing tragic at all, just an over-abundance of layered beauty upon literary complexity. As you unwrap the leaf to unveil the oxtail (Polonius spying from behind the arras?), you find this beautiful cross-section of meat that pulls together everything you enjoy savoring in meat - tendon, gristle, fat, bone. There is nothing rotten in the state of Sumatra, and madness need not be feigned - go crazy as you suck that oxtail dry. Moral corruption? Oh yes - this oxtail is criminal. There is just nothing legal about something so stratospherically out of this world.
Oxtail not what you can do for your dinner, but what your dinner can do for you.
Dessert might have been a bit of a letdown, if only because we chose two that turned out to be relatively similar with just different ingredients - still, both were excellent. "Serabi Pandan Wangi Sore" is a traditional coconut pancake with sliced banana doused in coconut soup - you should know by now that I am a pancake purist, but you also know how you always have to fight the urge to douse your pancake in syrup, right? Well, what if it was dunked in a sweet coconut soup that wasn't overbearing like syrup, but when soaked into every single one of the pancake's crevices, is like fusing one awesome dessert with another? Two amazing desserts in one soup spoon, as one. That's a long-lasting marriage, until it enters the tunnel of love that is your gaping mouth. "Kolak Tegal Ayem" is sliced taro, banana and sugar palm fruit simmered in warm fragrant coconut soup - it's the same coconut soup as the other dessert, just with different ingredients. Or, an excuse for a second serving of that coconut confection and surely, there's got to be lots of vitamins in that taro, banana and palm fruit? Even if not, Lara Djonggrang is the kind of restaurant that is meant to stir the imagination, push your taste buds around so they don't settle into complacency, and whisk you away to that magic land where excellent eating transforms from fantasy to reality.
Yet another pancake success story.
Bowling for soup.
So go ahead and indulge in everything that's in front of you on that imperial edict of a menu, because they're making history in that kitchen. Everything we ate came to the princely sum of just a little over US$100, and that's including a glass of wine and two cocktails. And with the impeccable, attentive and gracious service, yes, we did feel like we were royalty in there.
Lara Djonggrang
Jalan Teuku Cik Di Tiro 4 Menteng
Jakarta Pusat, Indonesia
+62 21 315 3252
laradjonggrang@tuguhotels.com
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