Sundanese Style Indonesian Dinner

Ate on Saturday night at an oustanding Sundanese restaurant called IBC. The Sundanese are an ethnic group from the Western Javan highlands (and some Central areas) who utilize a very distictive cuisine. I chose Sayur Asem, a somewhat sour tamarind soup with veggies, raw peanuts, and various raw nuts and seeds. My favorite was the Karedok, which is a veggie salad with wickedly spicy, but utterly delicious, peanut sauce. The main course was Nila Pensol, pan fried whole Tilapia, then stewed with giant tomato slices in a spicy/sour/sweet yellow curry sauce. Not a big Tilapia fan, but cooked in this manner, it was out of this world.  Need to work on my fish deboning skills, though.

As an added bonus, this restaurant, which has been in business for generations, is housed in a lovely 19th Century Dutch mansion, giving me the feeling I was dining in a decade that was long ago and far away.














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