Pondok Rempa, Elizabeth St

Pondok Rempa is an Indonesian restaurant on Elizabeth St, close to the Victoria Market end (than the Flinders St end). It does not seek to attract customers by a modern fitout, good ventilation or fancy dishware, but it is known for the good and cheap Indonesian food that it serves. Ironically, the owner of the restaurant is Cambodian. 

I asked my Indonesian friend who had been to every Indonesian restaurant in Melbourne and beyond, what she thought of the food at Pondok Rempa. She said it was OK. I have yet to get a really enthusiastic 'Great!' answer to my question. It must be difficult to rate Indonesian restaurants because she can cook the same thing in her own house, with recipes that had been in the family since the spice trade, so it's just ordinary food to her. 

I'm not a great connoisseur of Indonesian food but I enjoyed the food here. We ordered the Nasi Uduk Ayam Kresmes $11.80 - this is quite a mouthful but it translates to rice in coconut milk with fried chicken. It also comes with the fried bits, rather like the tempura batter bits for mouthfeel, fried tofu, fried tempeh and small bowl of chicken broth. Tempeh is natto, in slab form. Natto is an acquired taste because it is foul in taste, smell and texture. As you can probably guess, I am not a fan. But it does have great health benefits related to fermented foods and some people adore the stuff. Not me. 

While the tempeh gets nibbled on, the rest of the food on the plate disappeared pretty quickly. The rice was very flavourful, having been cooked in coconut cream. Fried chicken was crispy, the fried batter bits were definitely crispy. 

I also ordered Sup Buntut (ox tail soup) $14.80 which is a clear soup with pieces of ox tail bone, and carrots with rice. The soup was very flavourful and warmed us right up after a long day of walking in the rain. You might think that $15 is expensive for just soup with bones, but there were some pretty meaty bits in the bones and because it was cooked on the bone, the meat was especially tender. Ox tail bones are quite expensive - it figures because there can only be one tail per animal!

The layout of this restaurant is rather different in that the open kitchen is at the entrance. The bar area takes up another chunk of area at the back of the restaurant. The chefs do a good job in using the heavy duty rangehood while cooking and the ever swinging front door provides some extra air circulation (cold and crisp in winter) but do expect to leave with food smell lingering in your clothes. This place is good for a quick bite, but don't expect to get too comfortable.