You know what day it is…
Hey hey, it’s sate-day!
I know you’ve all been hanging on to this day since last week so here it is (and spoiler alert… it’s a good one!)
But before I go ahead and tell you where the best sate of the week is, I feel like I need to change a few things as I’m looking at all of this the wrong way!
I’ve been asked to clarify if I’m focusing more at the sate as a whole meal or the sate sauce and to make myself clear, the sauce makes the food taste great right?
So to finally clarify; it could be the crappiest cooked piece of meat ever but if the sauce is good, I feel like the meal can be redeemed…somewhat!
So I know last week I said I’d do warung special but unfortunately that’s not happening for this post (although I promise that a warung style food post will be put up before I leave). I did, however, improve on the timing of eating satay and can you believe that I found this sate on Sunday?!
But before I go on, I have to make one change and that is the way I critique the food. I have found that there needs to be some type of criteria on how I am judging the sate as this weeks best didn’t fit how I’ve been judging in the past. So I’ve now decided to judge the satay based on the following criteria;
Texture: Was it creamy? Too thick? Too sloppy? Too many crushed peanuts?
Spice: Was it spicy or was as there no spice at all?
Overall Taste: Could you taste the peanuts? Was it creamy? Was it smooth?
Overall food for money: Was the meal reasonable for the price paid?
All categories will be judged out of 5 with 1 being poor and 5 being out of this world good. Out of the 20, I will calculate the outcome to 10 (thank you maths) and boom, that’s final score!
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So this weeks sate wasn’t recommended by someone but something I stumbled across on my adventure!
On Sunday morning, after calling the parents to check in and having my breakfast, I got on the back of a bike and made myself comfortable for the hour and a half journey to Ancol in North Jakarta.
North Jakarta is the home to Jakarta’s theme-parks (think Queensland’s theme parks but imagine that in Indonesia). I didn’t go to any of the aquariums because that isn’t my thing and I didn’t go on any rollercoaster because although that is my thing, and probably safer than Australia’s theme parks at the moment, I wasn’t there for any of that; I was there to go to Eco Park.
Eco Park is one of the ‘theme parks’ but what really defines a theme park?
Eco park is a park that has bike tracks, a community garden, playground, lakes (with massive fish and bridges) and a local market. It seemed like the perfect little outdoor place to explore! I met up with three lovely ladies and we enjoyed the day out.
There were opportunities to rent bikes, scooters, golf carts; and my personal favourite, a blue punch buggy that had the inside gutted and replaced with bike pedals. I could definitely see that as my family’s mode of transport if they were there! But alas, I just rented a bike (bicycle not a motorbike mum) and rode along the tracks.
The park wasn’t very big so we managed to complete the track in 30 minutes. As we had a lot of time on our hands, we just rode the track again! Unfortunately, as is common at this time of year in Indonesia, a loud clap of thunder was heard and we thought we better get cover before the torrential downpour came!
The restaurant next to Eco Park is called ‘Wilujeng Sumping’ and they had a lovely outside oasis area. The seating area was above one of the lakes and had little bridges that you had to cross in order to get to your booth. The booths were under a huge bamboo structure and allowed you to sit Indian style on the floor!
The restaurant specialised in seafood and was a little expensive if you ordered a main meal. I originally wasn’t going to get anything but after I saw how good Monique’s sate looked, I just had to order it for myself.
The sate came with 7 chicken kebab skewers that were cooked perfectly. It was served separately with the kebabs on one plate and the sauce on the other. The sate sauce had some soy sauce around the outside that you mixed in with it. However, it contained little spice, which if anyone has read the previous posts, you will know that I like a little kick. Nevertheless, the texture was smooth and the sauce was so creamy and thick that I was more than happy to just eat it on its own. It cost 60,000 Rupiah ($6AUD) and certainly worth every thousand in my opinion.
Spice: Very little spice at all – 1.5
Texture: Creamy and thick which is a great way to have it – 5
Overall Flavour: The flavour was strong, however, there was only a hint of peanut- 4
Overall food for money: I think 60,000 was a reasonable price, if not a little on the high end, but you definitely paid for the taste – 4
So that comes to a total of 7.25/10 which is definitely the best sate so far and will be a tough one to beat!
Enak Sekali!
So that’s it for Hey hey its sate-day this week! I’m hoping I’ll find even more good Sate today or tomorrow on my little trip away from the hustle of Jakarta!
But until Saturday,
Hey hey, I’m out!
Teesh xx