Let's eat... Indonesia

Tampopo, The Orient, The Trafford Centre, Manchester, M17 8EH

In the UK, we?re in the middle of a few weeks where loads of bank holidays have coincided. First, we?ve had Easter. Next, we?ve got the Royal Wedding... lots of people are thanking William and Kate for the day off; I?m thanking them for time and a half. And then the Monday after that, we?ve got May Day! Why am I telling you this? It has a bearing on the most recent hit, honest. It was planned for Friday after work, but we weren?t entirely sure if the place was going to be open what with it being Good Friday. The internet was checked and answered in the affirmative, so we headed off in the car after work with fingers crossed. For a change, the internet got it right.

My Indonesia hit involved a return to the Trafford Centre, although it didn?t necessarily have to. For it, I visited Tampopo, which currently has 3 restaurants in Manchester and 1 each in Reading, Bristol and Leeds. Like many places out there, it offers signature dishes from several South East Asian countries, apparently inspired by visiting the countries in question. It?s actually named after a film character that goes in search of ?the perfect bowl of noodles? (I tried to find out which film but I?m not having much success), so needless to say that there are lots of noodle options on the menu. I of course had a gander at said menu online before deciding to visit Tampopo; all the offerings are labelled with their country of origin and there were 3 main options labelled as Indonesian. Oh, and one of them was nasi goreng which I?d already come across in my research, so the decision was easily made.

My dining partners were first-timers when it came to joining me on a hit, although they?d both heard a fair amount about my blog from me while at work. We all got changed sharpish after a Friday of working and drove... rather fast... to the Trafford Centre. The plan was actually to spend the first half of the trip doing a bit of clothes shopping. I?m fashion clueless but my work friend is not, although I think she got a tad frustrated with my lack of excitement about the clothes. I have to admit, I was more excited about the prospect of food and so, after a bit of a failed shopping trip, we headed for the Orient and that particular branch of Tampopo.

The small size of these pictures is again

making up for my shoddy camera work.

I turned the flash off in an effort to be discrete

but it does make things a tad blurred

The restaurant is in the first floor in the Orient. It sort of has an ?inside? and an ?outside?... you can?t really be ?outside? in the audience, but there was a bit that spilled out onto this first-floor walkway and another that was enclosed behind the restaurant windows. Both areas were filled with bench seating in a sort of mahogany colour, with wells placed every 2-bum interval down housing Chinese soy, Indonesian soy and chilli sauce. In the ?inside? section, there were long, cylindrical, lantern-style lampshades over the benches at a similar 2-bum interval. One wall was dedicated as essentially a serving desk; fridges lined the bottom section while the highest section was decorated with South East Asian food paraphernalia. The other walls were decorated with things like tiles but... well, it?s another occasion where my powers of observation weren?t quite being used to their full. You know how things are; you?re with work friends, talk turns to work gossip and other things... and you get distracted.

So it?s nedless to say that I got a little distracted away from inspecting the atmosphere of the place, but I have managed to cobble together a few observations. We were seated on a bench/table just along from a couple that we didn?t know, and this felt a tad peculiar. I daresay it?s a cultural thing; we?re not used to sharing tables with people we don?t know because we?re used to the table indicating the boundaries of our social space. As to the music, it was something from the South East Asian bracket and wasn?t on too loud... in fact, it managed to be quieter than the music that had been playing in several of the clothes shops, so was at about the right level to attempt to create a certain ?mood? without making it too hard for customers to talk.

Now, at work we?re meant to keep our customer service at a continuously high standard and this involves being polite to customers. I frequently comment that when I?m on the till, I get face-ache from having to smile constantly. Now, as to the member of staff that took our orders us in Tampopo... I don?t think she was a generally ?smiley? person. We?d commented after she?d taken our drinks order that she hadn?t exactly seemed very cheery or polite but, after I had a little joke with her about not being able to pronounce the names of some of the dishes, it seemed that her normal tone of voice made her sound a little grumpy when she actually wasn?t. There was also a weird moment with another member of staff when some drinks were brought to us that we hadn?t ordered, but this didn?t turn out to be an issue as they didn?t try to charge us for them. Also, our food arrived incredibly fast... so fast, in fact, that I worry a little about what this says about the freshness of the food served. But I don?t want to cast aspersions when I don?t actually know how they managed it so fast, so I?ll move on to describing what I actually ate.

Nasi Goreng. And no, I didn?t use the fork and

spoon. Chopsticks all the way for me,

down to the last grain of rice

As I?ve already said, I knew what I was having before we turned up and so it was with eager anticipation that I waited the very short amount of time for my nasi goreng, described on the menu as ?Spicy wok-fried rice with shiitake mushroom, chilli, lime leaves and onion flakes?. It also came garnished with sticks of cucumber and contained spring onion and tomato. It was available with either chicken or prawn (the latter being slightly more expensive), and I?d gone for chicken. Now, the cucumber sticks hadn?t been chopped fresh as they?d gone a little dry, but it was clear why they?d been included as they provided a cool, fresh crunch and a brilliant bit of green. They served a similar texture function to the onion; while this particular ingredient obviously had a distinct flavour, its best feature was the crunchiness that it provided as a contrast to the softness of the rest of the elements of the dish. One of these soft elements was the shiitake mushrooms which had a beautifully deep, earthy flavour. The chicken was tender and had absorbed a lot of the delicate citrus flavour of the lime leaves. These lime leaves seemed to have been included in chopped and whole form and infused the whole dish with their flavour and delicate fragrance. Indonesian food is known for being hot and the menu had warned that the nasi goreng would be mildly spicy; the spice came from finely diced red chilli and I?d agree with the spice rating indicated on the menu. There was enough warmth to satisfy the side of me that likes a bit of spice while also allowing the more delicate flavour of the lime leaves to come through.

Bubor pulot hittam. I used the spoon this time...

think I would have made a mess it I?d

attempted it with chopsticks

I was alone when it came to having a dessert because I have to give Tampopo some credit for its? dessert menu, which is probably on of the most original I?ve seen so far. Okay, it had the one offender that seems to creep onto many menus, the crème brulée, but their variation did include ginger. I, however, went for a dish labelled as Malaysian but that did come up on a website I?d found on Indonesia food. This was Bubor pulot hittam, described on the menu as ?Malaysian sticky black rice pudding, made with creamy coconut milk and luscious palm sugar?. This again arrived promptly and was served piping hot. The dessert itself proved to be surprisingly plain. It wasn?t particularly sweet considering the description of it as including palm sugar, and while it was garnished with a blob of coconut milk, the actual coconut flavour was very subtle and in fact overridden by milkiness. The ?black? bit of the dish was the rice; for those who don?t know, rice naturally comes in several colours, not just white! This is when its natural husk is left on. I?ve had red rice before (a product from Camargue in the south of France) and black rice proved to be of a similar texture, having a lot more bite than white rice and a similar texture to sunflower seeds. It also obviously created the impressive colour of this dessert, but again I?ll say that the taste was much plainer than I?d been expecting.

My nasi goreng was a very tasty meal and I thoroughly enjoyed the delicate taste imparted by the lime leaves. It was reasonably priced, always a plus... especially for someone like me who goes out for a meal each week, although the type of seating, disposable chopsticks and the restaurant design made it feel a little too like we were in Wagamamas. The dessert certainly looked different and was satisfying for what it was but... well, I think I?m getting to the stage of blogging disillusionment. The last few meals I?ve had have generally been yummy, but I haven?t exactly been pushing the boat out with trying drastically new ingredients. They?ve largely just been combinations of ingredients that I?ve tried before and so stuff is starting to seem a bit... samey. I also don?t have loads of prospects of trying something really different in the next few weeks as I think I?m about to start a run of European country hits. Maybe there?s the opportunity to try some animal body parts that I wouldn?t normally consider eating, just to shake things up a bit...

References

http://www.tampopo.co.uk/