This review is another long overdue writeup.
IR 1968 has been around for a long while but I never really had the drive to walk in and give it a try. Thanks to
@coffeemeow @sporbo and
@mochachocolata, my chance arrived and we came here for our little tweetup (twitter meetup)! @mochocolata and @Sporbo did most of the ordering since they are more familiar with the dishes while @coffeemeow and I were deciding which wine to order.
The food was alright in general, no surprises in my opinion but it was each other's company that made the meal a wonderful one! I am no expert in Indonesian food so please visit
@mochachocolata blog for a detailed review on our visit.
Gado Gado - make sure you pour the sauce over and mix well before eating.
The
satay looked weird on the little grilling stove with the candles inside. Taste wise they were rather weak.
I actually likes the
perkedel jagung (sweet corn fritters) but as mentioned by @mochachocolata and @sporbo, this dish is a very simple dish that can be made at home very easily. I will give that a try soon. :)
A very decent dish of
perkedel, I think I ate most of them ... ooops.
The
lontong capgomeh we ordered was a platter of some sort and "longtong" translated to rice cakes. It was alright, many of the side dishes were items we ordered as well.
I enjoyed the
beef rendang with the yellow rice we ordered along with it. Texture was good, rather chewy but the flavor was alright, perfect to go with rice.
I love ox tongue so the
semur lidah (stewed ox tongue) was a dish that I finished to the last piece! It was soft enough and the sauce was a deep and rich.
The
yellow rice (nasi kuning) was presented nicely and we cleaned up the whole dish!
There are not many Indonesian restaurants in Hong Kong to my understanding and I wish there can be more so to give me more opportunities to eat Indonesian dishes!
Likes:- perkedel jagung (sweet corn fritters) & perkedel - simple yet perfect as snack in my opinion
- Yellow Rice (nasi kuning) which was lightly flavored
- semur lidah (stewed ox tongue) - very tender with a rich and deeply flavored sauce
Dislikes: - satay - meat overcooked, sauce rather weak
- beef rendang - rather chewy with rich flavors
Avg Spending: HKD 100 - 200 per person (without wine)
IR 1968 - Indonesian Restaurant 印尼餐廳28 Leighton Rd, Causeway Bay
Tel: +852 2577 9981
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Either the lighting was too dim or it was over grilled, it was pretty hard to distinguish the skewers from beef or pork until you bite on it. Both the pork and beef tends to be overly stiff or chewy and the Satay sauce was rather weak as well. Overall a fair dish with no surprises at all. (It somehow reminded me of the pork skewers from Golden Bull Restaurant which was very tender and the texture seems more like chicken than pork.)
The soup base was very good, spicy but tasty too. It was thick enough to have the creamy texture to it. The main ingredients for the laksa was the shrimps but it tasted frozen and seemed to be been cooked twice! What do I mean by that? It was so stiff / hard and dry that it must have been cooked twice over to have such a texture !!
As the name suggested, the soup was spicy but contained a touch of sweetness as well. A very good soup indeed. The spiciness was not of the type that would last the whole meal in your mouth, it was those similar to what I once tried in Thailand that would stay in your mouth only for a short while only. What remained in your mouth was the somewhat sweet and chili-flavored sensation of wanting more right away. While the soup was good, the shrimp, the shrimp with the shell still intact seemed to have cooked more than twice over; it was stiffer and harder than the one from the Laksa dish !
It did not taste like the usual one you would find at other places. It was good. I liked the touch of spiciness in the sauce. The vegetable was fresh and crisp as well. Nothing surprising. At this point I like to point out that our small table was already packed with food dishes but the staff continued to shove them in wherever there were spaces. The skewers were now on the right side of me and the satay sauce was way over at the friend's place across the table. I actually called out loud that "there isn't enough space on the table," but the server did not seem to hear or care what I said and continued his way back to the kitchen. Am I asking too much? or am I not suppose to expect good services at this place? I wonder ...
Very dry chicken and the sauce was so rich that it took over the taste of the chicken. Aside from the taste, the presentation was not very pleasant as well. There was a thin layer of chili oil on top of the sauce but somehow it wasn't spicy at all but it was very salty for sure.
