Raffles Jakarta

The Dining Room review Had Christmas Eve dinner here, let me start with the good parts. It had this open kitchen concept which was nice, although there was big column blocking my view so I didn’t have a full view of the kitchen. I saw guest coming into the kitchen and taking pictures and video. I wasn’t aware that we were allowed to do that, otherwise I would have loved to have gone in and seen how the chefs work. The service was quite good and our main waiter was very attentive and explained the dishes before serving. So thumbs up to him. My main complaint is about the food. First of all, I’m a huge foodie, actually I’m a super foodie and I also work in the foodservice industry. The cured salmon cone, reminiscent of the French Laundry salmon tartar cone I was expecting a nice cured and seasoned salmon with perhaps some flavors of herbs since the curing process can imparts these flavors in it. But it just tasted like salmon sashimi in a crisp cone. I do appreciate the presentation, reminded me of the famous French Laundry salmon tartar cornets. The foie gras 3 ways, although the texture was nice of all three foie gras mini dishes, I found the flavors of the foie very muted and seasoning very limited. But perhaps it was meant to be this way, I thought perhaps maybe it was my personal taste that I didn’t like it. The chestnut veloute had fresh truffles shaved into it, and I was expecting floral smell of truffles and flavor in the soup. But again, the taste of the freshly shaved truffles just weren’t there. This dish was nicely seasoned though and it goes to show how underwhelming and under-seasoned the previous dishes were in my opinion. Then the seabass, this was by far my favorite dish of the evening from perfect texture to good seasoning and the overall dish composition was excellent. But the sous vide turkey, although it wasn’t dry, again there was a seasoning issue in the meat. The sauce and the compote helped to add a bit of excitement to the turkey, which is otherwise quite a boring meat. I read on the menu that it comes with a Brussel sprout. I love Brussel sprouts and was looking forward to this, but all that was presented were five measly and sad looking leaves of the whole sprout…. The essence of Brussel sprouts comes from the whole sprout, from the slight bittnerness in the leaves to the texture and earthiness flavor close to the core of the sprout and not just from a couple of the leaves which were raw. It was just pretentious. This dish just upset me as a frequent fine diner and I just didn’t want to finish it. It just seems to be a miss one dish after the other that by the time dessert came, I didn’t want to eat anymore especially since I didn’t like the strong coffee flavor in the coffee ice cream. But this is not the fault of the chef, it’s just due to my dislike of coffee and ice cream together. The dessert presentation was immaculate though and a lot of thought went into this. Finally, the pralines. Although the flavors were nice the praline shell was soft and not what I’m used to. Generally when making pralines, the shell should be made from tempered chocolate and a sign of this is that it has a snap when biting into it. Even if the shell is thin, it should still have that snap. Generally Christmas time is where we get to splurge a bit more on amazing food experiences, but this just wasn’t it. In conclusion, I left the restaurant feeling quite upset and disappointed with the food experience, definitely not what I expect from a restaurant at this level. The only good thing was that I got to spend time with our parents in a nice restaurant setting on Christmas Eve.

Had a wonderful time here. Spent a moment at the Writers bar. Never felt so fancy in my life!! Danielle… wise beyond her years and a pleasure to talk to. Just the best atmosphere! Marvin? An expert mixologist. Aside from the menu drinks he has memorized and puts on a show preparing, I threw some ingredients at him and gave him artistic license. He did not disappoint! Great time, wonderful atmosphere. Would recommend!!!