Pagi Sore @ Jakarta

Whenever I went to Jakarta (or for that matter, Indonesia), I would always head out to my favourite Nasi Padang restaurants for a real treat. And this time I went to the reverent Pagi Sore for my Padang fix.

Pagi Sore has been serving one of the best Nasi Padang since 1973, and continues to evolve to a modern and successful Padang Restaurant. Nasi Padang (Padang-style rice) is a miniature banquet of meats, fish, vegetables, and spicy sambals eaten with plain white rice, it is Sumatra’s most famous export and the Minangkabau people’s great contribution to Indonesian cuisine.

Nasi Padang window display in front of restaurant usually consists of stages and rows of carefully arranged stacked bowls and plates, constructed and filled with various dishes.

Pagi Sore is featured on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant’s list of “Essence of Asia”, an unranked collection of restaurant that represent authenticity, culinary culture, and community focus. While the recipe and cuisine are steeped in traditional flavours and technique, they develop new menus to for the discerning younger set and changed the interior decorations to suit modern comfort.

Once seated, the table was set with dozens of small dishes filled with richly flavoured foods such as beef rendang, curried fish, stewed greens, chilli eggplant, curried beef liver, tripe, intestines, or foot tendons, fried beef lung, fried chicken, and of course, sambal, the spicy sauces ubiquitous at Indonesian tables. Customers take — and pay for — only what they have consumed from this array.

Sayur Ubi Tumbuk (Cassava Leaves in Coconut Milk)

This is one of the most popular ways of cooking this vegetable and often found in any Padang restaurants. Sayur ubi a.k.a. singkong (cassava leaves) that has been pounded and cooked for long hours in tumbuk (coconut milk) to break down the fibrous leaves. The result was a really delicious vegetable stew with rich taste and aroma of coconut.

Jangek Siram (Deep Fried Cow Skin)

At first I thought they were pork crackling, and then I remembered that this is a Halal restaurant. In fact, this was deep fried cow skin (not cow hide; there’s a stack difference between the two). Also known as krupuk kulit or krupuk jangek (skin crackers), the soft inner skin of cattle (cow or water buffalo) is diced and sun-dried until it hardens and loses most of its water content. The diced and dried skin are later fried in ample hot cooking oil until they expand in similar fashion with bubble and yield a crispy texture. 

Tunjang (Beef Tendons)

Gulai is a rich, spicy and succulent curry sauce and my favourite style of curry in Padang. And beef tendons cooked in this method was superb, very soft and flavourful.

Otak Gulai (Cow Brain in Yellow Curry)

This is my favourite dish in the Padang repertoire despite being warned multiple times about the level of cholesterol in each serving. Otak gulai is simply cow’s brains cooked in this sweet, savoury yellow curry. The creamy brain and curry made this dish like eating a very Asian (Indonesia) cream cheese.

Everything was so flavourful and yet one can taste the differences between the different meats and condiments. Remember to add sambal ijo (green chilli sauce) as condiments, they would alter each dish and blew your mind with a flavour explosion in the mouth.

Pagi Sore Saharjo
Jl. Dr. Saharjo No.232, RT.1/RW.4, Menteng Dalam, Kec. Tebet, Kota Jakarta Selatan, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta 12870, Indonesia
Tel : +62 21 2290 1111

Visited Sep 2023

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