Lucy M.
Yelp
Pre-COVID: Small, warm, and cozy, eating a meal here feels like you're dining in someone's living room. Our waiter, who might also have been the owner, welcomed us like regulars even though it was our first time and was enthusiastic about explaining the menu and cooking methods.
We started off with complimentary tea. My friend and I also ordered coconut juice (much sweeter and a little thicker than coconut water, with coconut chunks), and a Thai iced tea. Also on the menu were Japanese items like takoyaki.
They have board with specials and we received detailed explanations as to what they were. We ordered the Gudeg Ayam Penyet: fried chicken (choice of dark or white meat), jackfruit, coconut milk, with a hard boiled egg, deep fried tofu, cucumber, and soy bean patty on the side. We also ordered the whole red snapper, deep fried then grilled, with deep fried then grilled tofu, and another soybean patty. Both came with rice.
The chicken on the Gudeg was overcooked and dry, but the jackfruit was delicious. This was my first time having jackfruit and had I not known it was fruit I would have thought it was meat. There is a sweetness to it, but the texture and flavor were very similar to shortibs (it flakes the same when you pull at it with a fork), and it is cooked with a bit of cow. There was a also just a little heat. I would have gladly eaten an entire plate of this as an entree. The dish also came with a medium spiced (some would find it very spicy) red dipping sauce that tasted strongly of shrimp paste.
The snapper was also overcooked, I'm not sure that it needed to be both deep fried and grilled. The the tofu that was prepared the same way was the best I've ever eaten. They marinate it in a tumuric sauce first (when you break it open you can see yellow). The inside is creamy and silky, while the frying and the grilling from the outside give it both a slight crunch and the smokiness from the grill. We ordered an extra side of this just to take home. The dipping sauces here also included the red shrimp paste based one, as well as a sweeter thin brown sauce I thought went well with the fish and soybean patty. We took the owners recommendation and mixed them together on the rice and this was definitely the right thing to do!
The meal had 3 and 4 star aspects to it but I rounded up because of the phenomenal service and because when something was done well, it was done really well, and makes me want to come back to try more!