Avigayil Damm

For a belated birthday dinner, I took out three friends of mine to Din Tai Fung, a Chinese restaurant famous for its dim sum variety and other dishes as well. We ordered chicken xiao long bao (dim sum filled with chicken – yummy and juicy), fried rice with salty fish (yummy and salty but goooood), mie angsio sapi (noodles with beef – best with additional soy sauce and chilli), kepiting soka abon (crab with floss – no idea how it tasted, I don’t eat crabs), steamed vegetables dumplings (not so impressive but good anyway), and buncis cah sapi (stir-fried haricot beans with minced meat – deliciously crispy).

It has been a long time since I last dined here so I really dug in. We all did. With all the food on the table, at first we thought there was no way we could finish them all, but we were wrong. We even ordered a second double portion of the chicken dumplings because they were so delicious. Of course it goes without saying, that I would definitely come back to this place again soon.

Ok I know my birthday was two days ago but my mom wanted to make me something special. Originally she wanted to bring some food over on the 12th but I told her that my hubby may have something else planned (which turned out to be true). So my mom (as well as my dad and sister) came over yesterday and brought that special Indonesian celebration food, which is yellow rice and all its accompaniment.

The menu was yellow rice with Javanese style fried chicken, potato balls (perkedel or frikadellen – not sure what the English word for it is), sambal goreng kentang (diced potato stir fried with chilli sauce and boiled quail eggs) and stir-fried soybean cake (oseng tempe). Additionally, for garnish there was thinly sliced omellete and chicken floss (abon ayam). She made so much that I could even bring some today to my office for my lunch. So for me, the birthday celebration lasted three full days!

I don’t really know what is the big deal about turning older. Lots of my friends dread their birthdays, saying, “Oh I am sooo old!”. For me, it’s a day to remember I have been blessed yet another year.

And that day is today. This day I turned 33 years old. Or maybe I should say. this day I will turn 33 years old, because I was actually born at 23.15 so I am not 33 years old yet. But anyway… today was quite special.

It started with my colleague arriving in the office, carrying a birthday cake for me, which we cut and shared with other colleagues later in the afternoon. Then I went out for lunch with my boss, as we had a lunch meeting to discuss my work and the future. The day ended with dinner with my hubby at Brasserie in Kemang.

The chocolate cake was really good. If I remember correctly, my colleague got it from Dapur Coklat, but let me check with her again and I will update this post. In the afternoon she actually put on a candle on the cake and forced me to make a wish and blow the candles. Good thing she only put one candle on, otherwise the cake would have been on fire.

The lunch with my boss was at Loewy’s went pretty well. We talked about the possibility of an earlier departure since my hubby and I didn’t know when and where his next posting will start. We also talked about many other things, but most importantly (at least in relevance to this blog), the food we (or at least I) ordered was good. Actually from a posh restaurant like that, I expected more but I guess I probably also chose a more down to earth menu: chicken pot pie. So although this time the food was not so impressive, I would give it another shot. Since the dish came covered with puff pastry I took a picture after I have gotten through some of the pastry.

In the evening, as I mentioned before, my hubby took me out to Brasserie, a restaurant we used to frequent quite often when we first met. There was something about this restaurant though, that made us stay away for quite a while (according to the floor manager, we haven’t been seen there for over two years). And come to think of it, the last time we came here I think was on 10 March 2007 which was the first day that I introduced my then boyfriend (my current hubby) to my parents. So yes it has been two years, even more. The reason is, there is always something about the food. Although it won’t ever taste bad, but then the meat would either be not so tender, or there will always be small hiccups that drags them down a notch from being perfect. We must admit though, that they are very good in making chocolate mousse, and so far we have never found any other restaurant serving anything that could beat them in this category.

Since we knew the floor manager a little, she came and chatted a while to us. Somehow our conversation led to my hubby’s birthday and then led to the question on when my birthday was. Being caught in the spot (and I have actually lost the ability to lie), I had to tell her it was today. She congratulated me, and then took our orders and left us in peace. Or so I thought for a while. My hubby ordered fillet mignon, which he said was ok but not special, and I had the lamb chops, which tasted ok but was not so tender. But we enjoyed it nevertheless, and of course we could not leave the place without ordering their delicious chocolate mousse.

Just in the middle of enjoying our dessert, the floor manager came out with the whole staff (even the kitchen and the parking staff) to sing ‘happy birthday’ to me and presented me with a small chocolate cake. Since we were already very full, they were more than happy to put the cake in the box for me to bring home. It was a very nice surprise and quite heart warming.

So that was how my birthday this year went, and I am quite happy with how it turned out to be. And to top it all off, my hubby presented me with a very nice present: a Canon EOS 450D, which I have been eyeing for a while. I will certainly now start to learn more about photography, and put an end to the miserable photos on this website.

Oh and in case you wanted to visit any of the restaurants mentioned here, here are their addresses:

It is my sister’s birthday today so my hubby and I wanted to take her and our parents out for lunch. We originally wanted to go to Cafe Wien, an Austrian cafe located in Plaza Semanggi because my sis wanted to have apfel strudel. Unfortunately it turned out that they have closed and now in replacement of it stands the fast food joint Burger King.

So we walked around a little looking for an alternative, but since we didn’t want to risk choosing a restaurant that we had no idea about, we ended up in Solaria restaurant which is almost always reliable to have decent tasting food.

My dad and hubby opted for chicken cordon bleu while my sister opted for chicken mozzarella. I chose a more Asian taste, and picked chicken katsu with noodles in teriyaki sauce. Mine turned out to be the best choices, because apparently the two other chicken menu did not taste much. The chicken was well-seasoned, and then of course the noodles took on the taste of the teriyaki sauce. It was served with a small bowl of broth.

Of course since it was an Indonesian restaurant, they did not serve any apfel strudel so my sis will just have to wait for the next opportunity.