The Kintamani Resto & Cafe features calming pools as a pleasant accent. (JG Photo/Simon Marcus Gower)
The journey from Jakarta to Bogor may cover quite a few kilometers, around 50, but it is relatively easy thanks to a toll-road that flows into the West Javan city.
Many travelers, when coming off that toll-road, make a right turn at the Bogor junction and head to the impressive botanical gardens that lie at the city’s center.
Alternatively a left turn at this junction takes you along a wide tree-lined avenue that hints at the original spacious layout of the town.
Indeed some of the trees on this avenue could well grace the precincts of the gardens. They are large and clearly elderly.
Those great trees offer shade along the roadway but also provide a natural, cooling environment for the premises that line the avenue.
Among these buildings are some large and attractive restaurants where diners can eat and look out onto the avenue as they breathe in fresher air than that of the nation’s capital.
A must-stop among the eateries along the avenue, Jalan Pajajaran, are two restaurants that take their names from other parts of the Indonesian archipelago: Kintamani Resto and Cafe and Riung Gili-Gili Restaurant.
Kintamani, named after a very scenic part of Bali featuring the active volcano Mount Batur and its surrounding lake, is perhaps the more basic of the two eateries both in terms of design and the menu’s standard.
A series of raised pools allow water to cascade down into the central courtyard of the restaurant.
Generally the dining is peaceful and quiet. The menu is wide-ranging — of course, catering to Indonesian and Asian tastes but also extending to seafood and Western offerings — however, this is, in my opinion, a slight overextension.
Basic Indonesian dishes are done well, and the entire menu is reasonably priced. But the seafood offering, on this visit anyway, was less successful, suggesting the breadth of the menu was proving to be a challenge.
Perhaps this is reflected, too, in the fact that Riung Gili-Gili Restaurant seems to generally enjoy a greater patronage.
A friend of mine once claimed that in the restaurant business the actual design and decor of an establishment can be just as telling as the quality of the food. If this is the case then Gili-Gili wins out, too.
The decor of Gili-Gili is simple, clean and quite classy. The entrance is somewhat a contrivance of old furniture and local features, which include an angklung (a bamboo musical instrument).
In a way the interior of Gili-Gili is suggestive of a mountain range, as the upstairs interior area features a lofty timbered roof space. This makes for a very airy, open and relaxed place to eat.
Like Kintamani there is a balcony looking out onto Jalan Pajajaran were diners can enjoy the menu highlights.
On this visit, a particularly impressive dish was a gourami fish soup — a little spicy, it must be admitted, but full of flavor. Also full of flavor was the semahe-mahe , a concoction of hot lemon, ginger, lemon grass and honey that is quite strong but also warming.
Soothing is an appropriate word for the dining experiences at both restaurants.
Their prices were inexpensive, and the environment in terms of food, decor and general climate was relaxed and welcoming.
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