Indonesian Flavours from Santi’s Kitchen

by Iyath Adam

Dear readers, we’re happy to report that over the past few years, we’ve been able to get a wide range of prominent cuisines here in the Greater Male’ Area. Asian cuisine, in particular, is widely available with Korean and Japanese food making some great entrances.

For this time’s Love this Dish article, we tried and tested authentic Indonesian food from Instagram food page, Santi’s Kitchen. 

Santi’s Kitchen offers all sorts of Indonesian foods, including main rice dishes, dumplings, sambals, and traditional Indonesian sweet and savoury snacks. But apart from the different pictures, the thing that caught our attention the most about the page was the descriptions about each food in the captions. So, if you don’t know what to order or have certain food preferences, don’t be daunted!

We chose to order the ayam geprek – a chicken and rice dish with a spicy sambal – the famous Indonesian chicken satay and mochi. 

The ayam geprek consisted of a side of white rice, lettuce leaves and a big piece of fried chicken which was heaped on top with a spicy sambal made of red chillies and onions. Be warned, readers, if you’re not a fan of spicy food, then this dish is NOT for you. The sambal was EXTRA spicy, but tolerable, both fresh and tangy when eaten with the rice and chicken – definitely a burst of flavour. 

The chicken satay came with something called nasi impit – pieces of compressed rice – and the traditional satay peanut sauce. The chicken was a bit less tender than we were used to in satay before but charred just right. The peanut sauce was chunky, slightly savoury and was a great dip for the chicken as well as the nasi impit. 

Although mochi is usually known as a Japanese dish, the one by Santi’s Kitchen was the Chinese version of it with a sweet, crushed peanut filling inside. The sweetness of the coconut sugar and the crunchiness of the peanuts were a lovely contrast to the stickiness of the mochi dough. This was the perfect dessert after the spicy, savoury main dishes! 

Overall, the dishes were delicious and especially an experience worth trying if you haven’t tried Indonesian dishes before. There are so many different dishes to sample yet from Santi’s Kitchen and we can’t wait to go back and try out more!