My assistant and I had vegan Indonesian lunch after doing a private family vegan Japanese cooking class nearby. We both are not a big fan of coconuts and sweet flavour but we decided to give it a go because although this restaurant is not a plant based restaurant, it has quite a few vegan options which is quite rare!
For entrée, we were both were absolutely starving, so better to eat low GI foods to avoid increasing our blood sugar level, so we ordered Lalapan & Kerupuk which is a platter of Indonesian crackers, raw vegetable crudités, fried tofu, fried tempeh, homemade sambal, and peanut sauce.
The vegan sambal was quite spicy but yummy. I could tell it was home made! The other good news was that the peanut sauce wasn’t too sweet! Yay
I was very curious what these yummy and solid texture crackers were so I asked the staff . These are made from barley and nuts. Nutritious!
Lalapan & Kerupuk – $13
Instead of ordering two entrees, we decided to order three mains because we could not choose which mains to order.
We chose GADO GADO salad which is steamed vegetables salad mixed with peanut sauce and served with cucumber, tomato, lontong (rice cakes), tofu, tempeh, and crackers.
Again, I was curious what these light and yummy crackers were made from because quite often crackers are made from seafood. They were made from tapioca and garlic!
Another interesting part was Lontong, which is a rice cake. They are not like mochi, I can still feel the texture of rice.
The salad is well mixed with peanuts sauce – for us, it was too rich. Less peanuts sauce would be nice or not mixed through, just put sauce on top would be ideal
Gado-Gado – $18
Another popular Indonesian dish is Rendang curry which is traditional dry curry made with plant-based mushroom-soy meat and potato, slowly-cooked in a spice paste of chilli, galangal, cinnamon, ginger, lemongrass, and coconut milk. I always get nervous to order curry with coconuts milk but thankfully there wasn’t that much coconut flavour and wasn’t too sweet. Very nice. I also like the soy and mushroom based plant based meat.
Curry always need rice! Normally I simply order steamed rice but always good to try something different – ordered Nasi Kuning which is a Javanese yellow rice cooked with turmeric, pandan, lemongrass, and coconut milk.
Again, bit scared to order rice cooked with coconuts milk but can’t feel much coconut flavour. Very nice!
Rendang Curry and Nasi Kuning – $21 and $4 (possibly the dish I like the most)
The third main is Vegan Geprek which is fried battered chicken made vegan – using celeriac and served with sambal.
I didn’t read menu properly so I thought this chicken was plant-based mock meat but when I ate it, I realized it was not mock meat! It was vegetable – celeriac. I don’t use celeriac much ( in Japan, we don’t have these ) Suprising bonus – because I am kind of avoiding over consuming mock meat. Butter is very light and crunchy. Very nice! served with home made sambal which is the same one as entrée.
Vegan Geprek – $21 (my second favourite dish of the day)
We were already very full but I was super curious to try Indonesian sweets – from the menu I could see very pretty bright green crepes called Dadar Gulung which are pandan rolls with coconut
& palm sugar
The crepes were warm when they came, and pretty but again, we didn’t read the menu – just got excited about bright green pretty look – inside filling was just too much coconut! So they are for coconuts lover for sure
Dadar Gulung – $9.5
I could not feel satisfied with the dessert so I saw another interesting dessert which still use coconuts ( yep, I am silly to keep ordering coconut dishes despite not being a big fan of coconuts) but did it anyway.
We ordered Indonesian popular dessert or refreshing drink called Es teler. (According to Indonesian, Es teler sits comfortably in the middle of a Venn diagram of “dessert” and “refreshing drink”) Traditional Es teler is shaved ice with jackfruit, avocado and coconut but they made a modern version with a soft and fluffy pandan sponge, coconut ice cream, sweetened avocado mousse, and young coconut-jackfruit salsa.
Sauce and sponge was bit too sweet ( we both don’t have strong sweet tooth ) for our liking but ice cream was nice ( not too coconuts! ) and avocado mouse was interesting.
Es teller – $15
Overall, even though dessert was very sweet, the peanut sauce and rendang curry weren’t as sweet as I was worried they would be.
Not too strong coconut flavour either ( except the crepes ).
All dishes are rich in protein from nuts and soy products and fat from nuts and coconuts so they are quite filling. We could not finish everything so pack up for take away for my assistant’s partner.
If you like Indonesian food and are vegan, please try the wide ranges of vegan Indonesian dishes at Salt and Palm! ( there are more vegan dishes like satay etc.. )
SALT & PALM – Indonesian Bar and Eatery
Address: 22 Glebe Point Road, Glebe, NSW 2037, Australia
MENU: http://www.saltnpalm.com.au/documents/salt-and-palm-food-menu.pdf
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