Nam-Doo’s Dining Ventures
Austin's only Indonesian Restaurant
By Nam-Doo Kim
It's not Chinese, not Indian, nor Thai. It's Indonesian food having its own full identity. But you can taste a combination of each of these cuisines at Java Noodles, the only Indonesian restaurant in Austin. You can find the three-year-old restaurant in a storefront center along East Oltorf.
On a rainy Monday evening of October, I visited the place with my companion Mi-Kyeong Lim, a Korean graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. Given the beginning day of the week, the bad weather, and the location unlikely generating foot traffic, the half-full restaurant didn't seem a bad sign for its business.
The menu included more than 30 kinds of appetizers and dinner items, grouped as grilled food, vegetarian, soup, seafood, noodles and so on. We planned to start with the soup Bidadari ($ 6.95), but the waiter's detailed descriptions of it made us change the initial idea. Bidadari, a huge brimming bowl of warm coconut milk broth, includes tender morsels of chicken and at least eight vegetable slices such as jalapenos and tangy leaves called honey lemon. Unlike the western soup, it could easily serve as a meal, or as a nice appetizer for a big eater.
Instead Mi-Kyung selected Sata Sapi Manis ($7.95), one of three versions (chicken, pork and beef) of the typical Indonesian appetizer Satay. My choice was Mie Goreng ($6.95); I felt compelled to try one of the fresh egg noodles the restaurant is known for.
My companion found Sata Sapi Manis featuring grilled marinated beef skewered on wooden sticks, and served with the house's sweet soy sauce. "I love any kind of meat on skewers," said Mi-Kyung. "But this is really tender and sweet. I especially like its charbroiled flavor." On the other hand, Mie Goreng appeared as a heaping plate of noodles stir-fried with chicken, beef, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, green onions, and cucumber slices. It was a hearty and filling dish. At first glance, I was reminded of a dish of Chinese noodles mixed with vegetables, but the Indonesian taste turned out not so greasy as is often the Chinese one.
For dessert, we chose fried bananas named Pisang Goreng ($2.95). "I've never seen a tricky egg roll like this around here," said Mi-Kyeong. "They look like nothing than vegetable egg rolls you can see in Chinese or Vietnamese eateries. But they actually include sweet, warm, and melted banana. It's funny and savory."
The interior of Java Noodles is simply but tastefully decorated, with white tablecloths, blonde wood chairs, and gray carpet. But most impressive are scriptures from the Bible posted beneath table glasses, a tapestry of the Last Supper on the wall and the background music of serene hymns, all of these suggesting the owner's faithful Christianity.
The obviously religious milieu did not made us uncomfortable, partly because we found the service to be friendly and informative.
Address: 2400 E. Oltorf, suite 14-15, Austin, TX
Phone: (512) 443-5282
Hours: 11.a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, noon to 11 p.m. Saturday, noon to 3 p.m. Sunday Buffet
About Nam-Doo:
Nam-Doo Kim is a Ph.D. student studying media sociology, political communication, and digital media communication at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a life-long resident in Seoul, Korea before he came to Austin, Texas in 1999. He received his master's degree from Seoul National University in the same year. He has an undergraduate career of a reporter and an editor at Seoul National University Press. Now he works as a translator for a Korean publisher Media Lab, which has the license of publishing a Korean version of a by-weekly magazine Business 2.0.