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I had heard that Indonesians like to combine words together, taking a few words and joining it into a single. This goes for one of their food, Batagor which really means Bakso Tahu Goreng. I have read that its a food known from Bandung in Indonesia.

Its similar to the Yong Tau Foo… where they mix either fish, chicken or prawns into a paste as filling in the tofu before being steamed, then coated with a barter for frying. Once fried, its then covered with a peanut sauce plus kecap manis!

Taken hot, its really nice! They would usually chop it up and you can choose from the many styles they made it. I paid about Rp5,000 per piece (about RM2.00). The tofu is soft, the paste is yummy and the combination of the peanut sauce and kecap manis is really good!

One thing is for sure, thank god we don’t have the habit of merging words of food together in Malaysia, otherwise char koay teow = chakote, asam laksa = aksa, cendul pulut tapai = cenpupai, goreng pisang = gorsang… hehehe… I cannot imagine that happening .

Why amazing? Well, on my recent trip to Bandung… my boss can’t seems to stop taking this thing known as Kecap Manis… and ABC seems to be the popular brand with everyone. Fried rice, cumi (squid), prawns, anything he eats, he had to have kecap manis with it, he is just short of taking it with pancake, but he did suggest for someone to try it that way, hehe .

Well, I can’t blame him, this dark and sweet sauce is really not bad, especially when they chopped up some bird chilies (cili padi) and mix it with kecap manis, just take a little with your rice or dishes, taste really good. Its also good for cooking with things like squid or prawns.

I googled around and I was surprised that they even sold it on Amazon.com!!! Its not expensive, I brought back the small 140ml bottle, cost about RM1.20 and you don’t really need a lot to go with your food. On the label you can see some of the main ingredents are things like sugar, water, salt, soy bean, wheat and sodium benzoate (aka preservative).

Yesterday, during tea, Joe was telling me that when he was kid he remember, we used to have a similar kind of dark soy sweet sauce here in Malaysia as well, and I sort of remember vaguely that I used to had something like this when I was young too! Any idea if we have something similar here in Malaysia?

It was my first trip to Bandung in Indonesia, as most trips, its for work (where got so much money holiday here and there la ). Anyhow, I like the weather there, breezy most of the time and cooling but the city is really congested and polluted (too many cars!). Shopping for clothing however is a heaven here filled with factory outlets.

During one of the dinner, I was brought to this place, its known as d’palm Restaurant which serve Sundanese food which are the natives of Western Java. Some of us refer this place as the KOI pond place, because at the back garden, you will find a beautiful garden with the KOI pond running from the entrance to the back. They built wooden walkways on top of the pond and canopied seating areas as well. So as you sit and dine, just a quick turn to your side and there are KOI swimming around, imagine that . The building design is modern, a lot of glass and upstairs even have a stage for singing and performance.

You run through d’palm website, you can see the various menu of Sundanese food available, so I am not gonna elaborate on that. I tried one of the drink here, “es jeruk kelapa muda” which is basically a young coconut added to a citrus drink with ice! Its very good, sour, sweet and a little salty at the same time .

Now dining here, is a bit difference, we order the dishes we like as usual, here a lot of words is different from Bahasa Malaysia… we have things like cumi = squid, gurame = kind of fish, buntut = no, not backside but tail of the cow! The unique thing is that for rice, they have a varierty to select, the usual nasi putih, then nasi merah, nasi timbel, nasi liwet, nasi bakar, etc. Oh, the one thing I really like here is their gado-gado, the flavour is light yet very tasty and not too filling.

Its quite a unique experience and I find the pricing to be quite ok for a nice environment and pretty good food . So if you are in Bandung, try to go to No.45 Jl. Lombok and give it a try, do reserve the seat next to the pond .