Shalom Indonesian eatery @ Kensington

In Australia, any Asian, European, American or African cuisine, including fast food would qualify as "exotic".

We would have tried other highly rated restaurants in Kensington if they had not been closed for the festive season. Shalom was one of the few chomps that stayed open on Christmas Day so our choices were very much restricted.

The name Shalom tend to conjure images of Jewish food but that is not to be. I thought that the Indonesians would have borrowed from the Arabic word "Salam" for "peace".


The entree of gado gado did not have the usual ingredients of potatoes, beans and cabbage. It meets the criteria as "fast" food since they simply cut the lettuce and don't have to steam or boil the vegetables. Instead of firm tofu, they chose to use deep fried tofu puffs.



I reckon one could do better by preparing this dish at home if you have enough people to justify the preparation of assorted vegetables.
http://homecooksecrets.blogspot.com/2009/01/gado-gado.html


The lamb satay was highly recommended. It was quite flavoursome and the meat was not tough. However, it is slightly probably to mask the fatty cuts on the skewers.




The water spinach or kangkong by Indon lingo was a great disappointment. It was blanched!!! and topped with pulverised chilli. Every decent cook with some training would have stir fried the veggies in a hot wok with sambal belachan.

I actually voted the grilled fish with "shalom" sauce the best dish of the lot we ordered for the day. The marinade on the fish is both tasty and aromatic. The meat is well grilled till fragrant but not overly charred.

The fried chicken (differentiated only by the sauces one selects from the menu) should be served separate from the spicy sauces. I can't tell which is hotter since they all look and tastes rather similar. Drenched in ground chilli paste, I can wagger that most Aussies would not be able to survive this without sinus and gulps of ice water.

The durian ice is quite nice and certainly good value for money (above). One cereal bowl of the dessert has two tablespoons of durian pulp, grass jelly, green jello, coco nata, basil seeds in syrup and shaved ice.

The chendol (not shown here) is a wriggly mung bean jelly in coconut milk and palm sugar tastes of artificial flavouring of pandanus. The avocado milk shake is pretty good by the benchmark Indonesian standards. How else can one go wrong with their popular drink.

If you want my honest rating, the food ranges from below to above average. Nothing really exciting or fantastic which brings out the skills of the mostly young cooks cum waiters who seem to have limited knowledge beyond their brief. Local residents and UNSW students who want a quick meal probably don't mind eating this once in a while.

We'll be back later to patronise another restaurant further up the street.

- c.g.