Meal Fiesta!

Between Jl. Binamarga Bogor to Bumi Aki Puncak

Curiosity! I think that’s the right word for me since I was inspire with pak Bondan Wisata Kuliner show about Ny. Yenny’s Place. So here we are! After spending a nice weekend in Seruni Hotel – Cisarua, we intended to drop by to this place, specially for what pak Bondan Say about their reported dish!

The Old Fashioned Style Chicken Steak

Tumis Daun Raja, the primary target, since we were very curious about the dish, and what it would like compared with “Daun Ginseng”? Finally we may have a chance to taste it. It’s very similar with “Daun Ginseng” even our kids are may recoqnise it as “Daun Ginseng” once it was appear in our dine table. It’s very nice indeed, crunchy, fresh and “mak nyusss ……..” indeed!

The second dish, “Udang Gulung Sagobang” as referred! It is more like what we called “Kekian” rolled in thin egg omelet like Rollade; “Kekian” is an old fashioned Indo-Chinese dish made mainly from egg, minced pork-lard, prawn sometimes mixed with minced chicken chilled before it went to final cook stage – boiled then fry!

Udang Gulung Sagobang & Tumis Daun Raja

The Third one, It’s Chicken Steak – or Chinese style chicken steak, the most interesting of this dish is the sauce, very special – it’s like the old days when my grandma still able to cook during her Chinese New Year eve family gathering.

In summary, yes …. This is an old fashioned Chinese Style restaurant and worth to visit, especially if you are looking nice restaurant in Bogor.

Jala-jala Seafood Front Yard

Not to far away from Ny. Yenny Place, there is “Jala Jala Seafood” restaurant. It is a large seafood place for Bogor size City. But then, I think they have “miss” decoration that may mislead people to make them came over to their place.

They decorate their place with “Sudanese” style bamboo instead of putting their “Fresh Seafood Market” and Seafood BBQ in front of their place like the others did.

We were almost decided to leave that place if we are not to late to went out for dinner, so that we afraid that we won’t get other “proper” place to eat – since we were carrying our kids along.

But actually, their dish is not bad at all, it is an old style “Chinese or more like Singaporean Seafood”. We order BBQ Stingray, Fresh Blue Prawn in butter sauce, fried soft skin shell crab mixed with some stir vegetables.

Large Blue Prawn with Butter Sauce

But I think, they way they serve Blue prawn is a bit miss, since they split the head into two pieces instead of let the head like it has to be. This is actually the art of having the “Blue Prawn”, you have to uncover their head carefully to get the whole head in single piece – then suck their juicy inner head, very tasteful ………… it’s like … .oh my!

Anyway, this is a bit fancy restaurant, so do not expect you will have cheap seafood over there!

Bumi Aki Assorted Juices


The Fascinating Pencok Kacang & Sop Kambing

Next spot, Bumi Aki – one of our favorite. I wrote about this restaurant previously, but can’t help my self to re-write this report.

This time we went there in very ‘cold-wind’ and not dare enough to stay put on their “lesehan” place outside the restaurant. So we stay put in one of the indoor table. This time, besides our regular ordinary favorite dish, I order “Nasi Goreng Kambing” as recommended by one of “JSers” member. Mean while we were order 3 cups of “Skoteng” just to make our body warm before the main dish came in.

As usual, the dish came in few minutes, so here they are, the exotic “Pencok Kacang” made from fresh “green bean” & “Basil leave” in traditional sour sauce, our Favorite “Sate Jeroan Kambing”, “Sop Kambing”, Orange Juice and Strawberry Juice.

Nothing more than like pak Bondan say “Mak Nyuussss ………….”

Hotel Seruni @ Cisarua

Seruni #2 - View from Seruni #1 Swiming Pool

If we looking into the name which is “Hotel Seruni” there’s nothing that may not attract us nor brought up our curiosity to take a peek on this place. It is too common, like the ordinary villas that scatter around puncak area, it is very common and very typical, such as “Villa Mawar” or “Villa Kemuning” or whatever that may drive us to imagine a private own modest building with sober facility, in “a bit” quarter from main street.

View from Seruni #2 Hotel Main Balcony

But this one is different, It is a “huge” complex consisting two hotels which is Seruni #1 and Seruni #2 has at least three stars quality or equivalent, you may find a hotel with clean guestroom, four stars class amenities, two large resto, one of them is Japanese restaurant, two large swimming pool, Jacuzzi, sauna & spa with large function rooms, equip with very huge, well prepare and very decorated garden with colorful flowers.

Hotel with Unique decorations, it’s mixed between Balinese, Thai and Modern Chinese style – that remind me to large houses around mangga besar or surroundings. I say is a “flustering Style”, hehehehe …………………

The most fascinating part of this hotel is their park, seems that They want to dump everything that they though are intersting here. It is what I called an "Es Shanghai Concept", You'll find a large pond with waterfountain equip with big Swan statues in each corners - that will be good if the fountain has music and able to dance like the one in front of Bellagio Condominium in Mega Kuningan, there are two large artifical running water falling from top of the hill going through the valley with very unique design, mixed with scatter small padi fields mixed with several fruit plants and colorfull flowers, some gazebos that may be use for open air SPA, eventhough I wonder who wants to be massage in such openess just next to children playground?

We just spent our weekend here, just to get a bit escape from daily routine, a day after Chinese New Year, but unfortunately it is a rainy day and has very thick fog almost all the time. So here we are, stuck in the hotel, but I managed to get few pictures during “clear weather” that we can have several times, just few minutes each.

In summary, this hotel is very recommended! Specially for Puncak area that you may not have to much choice unless you go to Puncak Pass Resorts or Taman Safari Garden Hotel. It is located in the same main road that heading to Taman Safari Indonesia from the main road, but there will be a small road climbing to the left after you go for about 1km from Jl. Raya Puncak (the main junction to Taman Safari Indonesia). There is a signboard that pointing to the small road to the hotel. You have to follow the concrete road about 700m before you reach the hotel gate in the left side of the road. In a glance, the hotel gate is not interresting – only a small building with a medium size parking lot in the front, but don’t worry! You may find a huge Hotel Complex behind.

One more thing, they have "Barongsai" attraction during this Chinese New Year that may attract lot of hotel guests.

In Short terms, this hotel is very recommended!

You may find the hotel information here.
Jl. Pirus, Kampung Baru
Tegal Cibereum 16750

Seruni I - Pangrango
Telp. 0251-251111 (hunting)
Faks. 0251-258171
Seruni II - Gunung Gede
Telp. 0251-259988 (hunting)
Faks. 0251-250575

Telp. 021-8305877-79, 8281093
Faks. 021-8299002
reservasi@serunihotel.com

JAKARTA "Banjir lagi!"

there're some people has look at the "bright side about flood"

The opening day on First day of Feb 2008 bless with “heavy rain”, some people said that this is the “mother nature call” for Soeharto funeral, our former 2nd president, some others said that this is a “Jakarta yearly ritual” happened in the rainy days, and lot of versions spreading around over the years about this “Jakarta yearly occasion”. I think it is a good reason to promote Jakarta such a way?

“Welcome to Jakarta, the city of flood? You may watch the annual occasion of spectacular rain and flood during January and February every year, have your un-forgettable moment during our flooding seasons, honeymoon package is also available, please contact your nearest travel agent to get more detail information or visit http://www.jakarta-annual-flood.com”

Well, the show must go on, this time I wrote this blog about the seasonal occasion. I went to office as usual even though there’s a medium-sized rain since dawn. Driving to kids school drop-off them in front of the school yard as I did many times almost everyday, then continue for another hour drive to my office, and have normal daily activities in office.

But then the rain was getting worse, and I got a call from my wife asking about our home condition made my jump-out of my “deep joy of work” back to real world, and yes, I found out that water has been filling into our house, like a years before like a spring water spread out from underneath of our house ceramic. At the same time some of my work colleague seems a bit nervous and started rush back to their home. So I decided to follow their move, in case there’s something’ worse at home.

My Neighborhood during the flood!

It’s a hard way to back home, traffic-jammed almost all the way, I took almost 2 hours before arrived and find out that I have to park my car in front of our neighborhood just to walking’ in the rain, walkthrough the 30cm high water to reach my home.

By the time our kids back home from school, I asked them to “help me up” to wash out the water from home, just to give them the experience, I let them play around with the water, just like my old days ………….

Well, this will happened annually, so I try not to complain about it, and try to get the bright side of it. Lot of funny things happened, watching my kids playing around with water, walking across the flood to reach home, screaming and laughing in the middle of the rain. Oh My God, you are so kind to me, you give me such a joy that the others may not have, watching my kids playing around, while other parents may not let their kids do the same thing, just like our old days ………………