Sanctuary from The Mad World
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch. - Orson Welles

First published in the Jakarta Globe. 

Disheartened with the recent encounter of a very popular Japanese restaurant chain in Jakarta which serve crumbling sushi, limp sashimi, and over-seasoned everything else, I was wary of a new Japanese chain called Ootoya which claims to serve home-made Japanese food. 

The menu is quite extensive but the usual sushi and sashimi are absent. Only one type of raw fish (tuna) is served as toppings for rice dishes.  The rest are simple, mainly fried, steamed and grilled, rice-based fares with occasional noodle soups popping in. 

The winner was a menu set of rice with steamed oyster and fried breaded chicken.  The plump oysters were served on a bed of plain, slightly mushy rice steamed in a little bamboo steamer warmed on paraffin candle.  The accompanying fried and breaded cutlets of chicken swimming in a bowl of tempura-like sauce (with its clean and spicy grated white radish) provided a richer and more savoury flavour to the otherwise plain set.  A bowl of miso-soup, a little salad, and a mix of pickled vegetables were also provided as part of the set.

Following the advice of a knowledgeable staff, we sampled their charcoal-grilled mackerel and it proved to be wise.  Although the so-called Fish from Alaska, also grilled on charcoal, looked more tempting in picture, the grilled mackerel was really special:  the combination of sweet and salty that can only come out from truly fresh fish was deliciously minimalist.

On another occasion, we tried the chicken and egg donburi, which was comforting with its succulent pieces of chicken but was overly salted and lacked the refined and restrained flavours displayed by Ootoya’s other dishes.  However, my friends who tried rice with grilled chicken and rice with fried beef and kimchi claimed their dishes to be satisfactory.

Great oddities in the menu include the nutty natto (fermented soy-bean) and cold tofu salad.  There’s nothing to fear in a bowl of stringy and slimy natto but liking it is an acquired taste.   The cold tofu salad is a fond reminiscence of good and fresh ricotta:  clean, cold, smooth and rich on its own, it is guaranteed to whet the appetite for more to come.  For added complexity, try it mixed with the provided delicate spring onion, fiery grated ginger, and smoky nori.

The prices in Ootoya are extremely reasonable for the quality delivered.  Set-menus are particularly good value:  guest can select one of the three types of rice and it (for certain sets) is free-flow. 

If there’s a drawback from this excellent restaurant with its excellent service and cool, elegant dining room, the appetizers are often very quickly followed by the main courses.  The main courses are left cold while the appetizers are polished off.  Therefore, it’s advisable to ask the waiter at the time of ordering to keep the mains until appetizers are removed.  

As with many franchises in Indonesia who suffer a decline in quality once their expat chefs leave, I hope Ootoya continues to keep its quality long after the Japanese chefs are gone.  For now, Ootoya is highly recommended. 

Ootoya Japanese Restaurant
Pacific Place Mall, 5th floor
Jakarta, Indonesia
Tel:  6221 57973858