Great noodles and monster bakso straight out of Jakarta.
In Jakarta we had an amazing noodle dish that we thought we would never find the likes of again. The dish was made by a cheery young bloke in a hawker stand at a suburban train station. The train station was surreal, the ground floor was like a Bladerunner-esque community drop-in centre. Lots of people just hanging around, no money, nothing better to do, some folks with nowhere else to go. There were a few hawker stalls of course, and dudes sitting on the ground playing Fifa soccer on ancient Playstation 2 game consoles on big old TV's from the 1980s. This prepared us well for the train which was once an excellent Melbourne-style suburban train but hadn't seen maintenance in twenty years: no doors, just a big gap between you and detached limbs. There were no lights, folks were friendly but we did clutch our belongings as the carriage went pitch black when in a tunnel. Folks were poor. Very poor. So poor that two transvestites sitting opposite us in the carriage had raggedy old clothes and no makeup. It's a tough life when a tranny can't afford a nice dress and lippy.
We thought we would never taste anything like those amazing noodles ever again... Until we stumble upon Pinangsia Noodle House in Kingsford, they do noodles pretty much identical to the ones we had in Jakarta. I normally go for the first dish on the menu, mie ayam karete or something, egg noodles topped with chicken and mushrooms and a lovely fried wanton. $7.50.
We thought we would never taste anything like those amazing noodles ever again... Until we stumble upon Pinangsia Noodle House in Kingsford, they do noodles pretty much identical to the ones we had in Jakarta. I normally go for the first dish on the menu, mie ayam karete or something, egg noodles topped with chicken and mushrooms and a lovely fried wanton. $7.50.
The egg noodles are of medium thickness, fresh and very tasty, they must be cooked in chicken stock or coated with a bit of oil or something. I don't know what they do but these noodles are fantastic. You can get thin or thick noodles, we always go for the thick.
For an extra 50 cents or so you can get a bowl of soup with a couple of beef balls, fish balls or wonton on the side.
It seems mandatory to have a bakso goreng, a big fried beef ball, almost everybody who eats here orders at least one. It's the biggest bakso in the Southern Hemisphere.
They are filled with deliciously manufactured mystery meat. Soft in the middle with a crunchy coating.
We normally come to Pinangsia Noodle House on a weekend when it is jam packed with hungry Indonesian families. Business brings me here late on a Thursday afternoon and I have the place almost to myself.
Pinangsia Noodle House will always remind me of that bizarre train station, and how lucky we are to be born in a wealthy country, and how lucky we are to live in Sydney were you can find amazing street food from around the world, with change from ten bucks.
Pinangsia Noodle House is at 319 Anzac Parade, Kingsord.
I dislike the fact that Indonesian bakmi joints in Sydney always overkill on the huge chunks of chicken. On the other hand, I understand that this is Australia, not Indonesia.
ReplyDeleteIn Indonesia, street bakmi is supposed to be the cuisine of the blue-collar proletariat. It is a dish created to serve the working class by the working class. Therefore, the main selling point of the dish is the noodles - not the meat. Because people couldn't afford meat back then. A hundred years ago, there wasn't even any meat on bakmi - it wasn't until the 20th century when Indonesia started to prosper that people began to add bits of meat (note that I said 'bits' not 'chunks') on bakmi.
That said, bakmi is supposed to be cheap food. The ratio between noodles:veggies:meat should be somewhat like 5:2:1 instead of 5:1:3 in Australia.
However, in Sydney, one has to (obviously) consider the high overhead cost of operating a restaurant and therefore they couldn't just sell plain, cheap bakmi because that will substantially lower their profit margin. Therefore, they have to, understandably, load up on the meat so that people wouldn't complain the $7.50 price tag.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm just sad that bakmi in Sydney has to resort to being more about the meat than about the noodle.
Yes good point, that happens to many cuisines when they shift to Australia, they really ark up the meat factor. We also wish the smaller serving sizes you get in Asia would make it here.
ReplyDeleteHaha, really, Shawn? If there's one thing I won't miss about Asia is our serving sizes, LOL. I LOVE Australia for actually having a decent sense of food portioning suitable for human consumption. IMO, portions of food they serve in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Japan...are (usually) painfully meagre. You're very well-traveled. You know what I'm talking about.
ReplyDelete...unless you're planning to have a smorgasbord of 2 - 3 different dishes at the same time. Which I do whenever I visit one of Singapore's food courts and order a small plate of fried kway teow, a small plate of popiah, and a small plate of satay. It's like a pseudo-degustation. LOL
In Indonesia, they sell Oreos in packs of 3 biscuits. THREE. I'm all for healthy eating and sugar control but that's just sad.
Yeah I love those small serves because you can have many smaller meals a day instead of a couple of bigs ones.
ReplyDelete