Seared Ahi tuna. (Photo courtesy of Outback Steakhouse Indonesia)
Outback Steakhouse launched a limited-time offer menu recently for Indonesian meat lovers.
“We refresh our menu every so often. By offering these limited-time dishes we get a sense of what the customers want,” said Budhy Soeryo, Outback’s Southeast Asia operational director.
Coming up with a limited-time menu is hard work, Budhy explained, one that requires a lot of research, deliberation and a personal favorite, food testing.
“We were presented [by Outback International] with an almost limitless amount of dishes to choose from,” he said, adding that his team scanned through hundreds of pictures of the menu offered by Outback International and tried to determine the likelihood of certain dishes becoming a hit with the Indonesian market.
However, there are other issues to consider as well, Budhy added, like how the crucial ingredients for these dishes would reach Indonesia.
“There are some dishes that require ingredients to be sourced from specific places. We can’t use local peppers, as the peppers needed to make this dish come from elsewhere,” Budhy explained.
“We get in touch with our suppliers and if the cost of importing the ingredients puts too much burden on our customers, we won’t include the dish.”
Another factor in drafting the menu is variety, to ensure that all the customers’ needs, wants and expectations are met.
And so the limited-time offer menu, or LTO as Budhy called it, is arranged, comprising of 10 items that range from spinach artichoke dip appetizer to risotto to filet Oscar to seared Ahi tuna.
The artichoke dip is mixed with Monterey Jack and Parmesan cheese, and is served with tortilla chips. The dip has a rich salty taste and a plethora of textures but the cheese tends to overpower all other flavors.
Then there’s the Queensland Chicken Salad with Monterey Jack and cheddar cheese, beef bacon and honey mustard sauce that offers a pleasant mix of textures and tastes.
The braised beef risotto is served with Parmesan and cabernet sauce. It has a pleasant texture with a well-balanced mix of flavors from the creaminess of the sauce, the succulent and well-seasoned braised beef, to the hint of sweetness of the fragrant rice.
But what meat lovers of Indonesia might consider a personal favorite would have to be the filet Oscar topped with grilled asparagus, hollandaise sauce and mashed potatoes. The meat is tender and seasoned to perfection.
The filet Oscar is so impressive that it has the potential to be included in Outback Indonesia’s regular menu, which is what happened with the baby back ribs a few years ago. The ribs started out as a limited-time offer only, but because of the popular demand, it was included into the restaurant chain’s regular menu.
“We try to update the [regular] menu every year or so but we have to be cautious about putting in a popular LTO dish,” Budhy said, adding that often an LTO dish is popular because it is only available for a certain amount of time.
The LTO is available until May 2014 but less popular dishes might disappear even before then, Budhy said.
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