New Waves

Jakarta

Appears in

Published 1994

About

And so, finally, to Jakarta. Riding along Jalan Thamrin in a rare moment of traffic flow, we are discussing some question of Indonesian food. ‘I wonder what Detlef would think,’ I say, ‘pity he went to Singapore.’ Our host reaches for the earphone, and a few seconds later passes it back to me. ‘Here he is,’ he says. ‘Ask him.’

Detlef Skrobanek was executive chef, later resident manager, at the Jakarta Hilton. He was a major contributor to a book called The New Art of Indonesian Cooking, which tackled some of the problems I have been working on in London and in this book, though from a rather different point of view. He describes the work that he and his team of twelve Indonesian chefs did as ‘applying modern cooking methods to what is essentially a village cuisine’. We were to meet, eventually; but on an early visit I found to my delight that Prahasto Soebroto, the food and beverage manager at the Hilton, had laid on a banquet for us, with a menu de dégustation based on the work done by Detlef and his team.