Foodie 20180610

So yesterday, me and my two siblings, a brother-in-law, an aunt, and a cousin went to this restaurant called Bakerzin in Pondok Indah Mall for lunch. This restaurant focuses on general western food, and is part of a prominent chain called Boga Group. This place is also famous for their cakes. Beside Pondok Indah Mall, they also have outlets in some other malls, mostly located in South Jakarta.

I ordered Holy Shiitake pasta, which looked like this (forgive my bad take):

The name itself seems to be a pun on the popular interjection with the name of a mushroom used in the dish. It is actually linguine with mushrooms dressed in mushroom cream, drizzled with truffle oil, and topped with parmesan sheets. Now about linguine, I guess many of you, especially those who reside in big cities must be familiar with it. But I'm pretty sure in my hometown Medan, many people will consider that linguine is the same as spaghetti. Some will think it's the same as "fettuccini". And I also know some people who don't really care about the name, they're all spaghetti anyway. Since a little not-so-necessary information won't hurt, here's a picture listing some of more well known pasta and what makes them different:

Before talking further about the pasta, I guess we need to thank Pizza Hut for introducing spaghetti, fettuccine, and lasagne to Indonesian public. The penetration of Pizza Hut to Indonesian market is so powerful that most Indonesian will recognize those three types of pasta. A side note, I think pasta is often referred in their plural form, i.e. spaghetti, fettuccine, and lasagne instead of locally popular name "fettuccini" and "lasagna". Even I needed to check Pizza Hut menu online only to find out that they correctly listed the pasta as "fettuccine" instead of "fettuccini" but the latter is the name used by many Indonesians (confirmed by Google Search). 😅 Perhaps it's influenced by the plural -i ending in spaghetti. However, in Italian, the masculine singular spaghetto takes -i masculine plural ending, hence spaghetti, but the feminine singular fettuccina takes -e feminine plural ending, hence fettuccine instead of fettuccini. In the case of lasagna, the interesting thing is that while typing this blog my English spelling checker approves lasagna, doubting lasagne instead. Similar to fettuccine case, lasagna is the feminine singular form, so it takes -e feminine plural ending. Nevertheless as quoted from Wikipedia on lasagne:

As with most other types of pasta, the Italian word is a plural form, lasagne meaning more than one sheet of lasagna, though in many other languages a derivative of the singular word "lasagna" is used for the popular dish. Regional usage in Italy, when referring to the baked dish, favours the plural form lasagne in the north of the country and the singular lasagna in the south. The former usage has influenced the usual spelling found in British English, while the southern Italian usage has influenced the spelling often used for the dish in American English.

So I guess we can use the word lasagna without offending the Italians. 👮

As for the shiitake mushroom, it is a very popular Japanese mushroom. Thanks to the Japanese food craze in recent years (boosted especially by sushi chains from abroad), most Indonesians now are very familiar with the mushroom. Similar to many other traditional health food, there has not been any conclusive research that supports claims to the mushroom's medical benefit, yet. I'm a mushroom aficionado, and someday I will have my own little mushroom garden where I can harvest them and cook them by myself! Well deep down I believe that these mushrooms have certain medical benefit/properties we have yet to discover. 

Okay back to the food, it was decent. Six out of ten stars. It rightly gives you the subtle shiitake taste, but I think a bit more salt and pepper won't hurt. The serving size is okay, and I love how they add parmesan as the finishing touch. They listed truffle oil as one of the ingredients, but I couldn't perceive it yesterday. So we won't talk about truffle this time lol.

Afterwards, we visit Gaya Gelato for dessert. Gelato stalls recently and slowly are taking over the dessert hegemony from the previous crazes of ice cream and healthy yogurt vendors. It's Jakarta man, where everything will come with a blast but not necessarily will last. This Gaya Gelato hailed all the way from Italy (or they might simply have a shop there), spreading their fame from Bali before later opening their shops in Jakarta. The parlor in Pondok Indah Mall offers a cozy place to sit after hours of exploring the mall. Despite the craze, I found the price surprisingly is cheaper than the other gelato shop close to my office, Grom. Since each gelato shop offers different unique flavors, I tried the cioccolato arancia (or chocolate orange in English) and tiramisu. They also offer banana flavor, which is my personal favorite, but since imho people associate Italy with tiramisu more than banana, I opted for the former.

The cioccolato arancia was great! You know, bittersweet dark chocolate combined with some fruits can never go wrong. The refreshing, fruity element harmoniously compliments the the chocolate. Once I tried Ben & Jerry in Amsterdam (too bad they're not available in Indonesia), they had this cherry chocolate flavor, and I couldn't stop enjoying it. I've just googled it again, it turns out that the official name is Chocolate Cherry Garcia, and it's a limited batch flavor (boohoo)! The tiramisu flavor was okay, but you should try the cioccolato arancia while it's still there!

Credits: All images except the Holy Shiitake were taken from Google Search. I do not own them.