Saturday morning

The following morning we were waiting to flag down a taxi when we glanced to the right. There, standing bright and orange, uncamouflaged, and displaying its signs and notices for all to see was a restaurant, right next door to the inglorious Bumi Johar. I promised to suss it out while Martini was at work. Which I did. Fantastic. A secret, hidden Jakarta gem. A potential culinary oasis in a chaotic, sidewalk-trapdoor sprouting desert of soggy, slimy, sticky, rusty fish and rice and Coke.

“Ya-udah” means “done” or “sorted’ in Indonesian slang and is one of the two words I know because it’s pronounced Yoda! The Ya-udah Bistro’s menu was almost the best I’d ever seen. That pinnacle is still occupied by the eccentric Friends Dining Lounge in Nanaimo, British Columbia. In fact Friends is such a delight that it warrants a post of its own. Ya-udah’s menu listed 121 choices including treats such as Bavarian Leberkase, The Great Red Snapper Fillet Steak, Chateaubriand, Pork and Cheese Krakauer, The Swiss Man’s Breakfast, and Barley Grischun “Original recipe” soup, all aurally tempting and most permeated with a distinct Germanic influence and flavour.

I always disapprove of “bottomless” as a description of women and approve of it in coffee, so I had four of the filter coffees at a cost of Rp 8,500 or around S$1.20. They were insipid, tasteless, lukewarm and weak, but they were accompanied by liquid sugar which is infinitely superior to granulated.

“What time do you close?” I asked the young waitress.

“Yes,” she replied, prompting me to wave to another waitress.

“What time do you close?”

Her blank look sends me pointing to my wristwatch, swirling my index finger round the dial twice, then dragging said finger across my throat in a, “my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the root, and buried in the sand of the sea at low water mark, or a cable's length from the shore, where the tide regularly ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours,” gesture to denote, “What time do you close?” Her eyebrows lifted and her eyes sparkled with recognition,

“Ah, shut up!”

Well, I hadn’t said a thing with my second inquisitive attempt so I was momentarily miffed but I got the point and nodded.

“Twelve,” she concluded.

“Midnight?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Now, what is the password for the WiFi?”

She returned to the table with a small piece of paper with “Zealand30” written on it in ball-point. That was somewhat strange and coincidental but the total experience was on the good side of OK; brought down by the coffee but rescued by the potential and promise of the menu. Rose coloured glasses springs to mind here.