Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Regular Bread, Hummus, Olive Oil

    Last night we went with some friends to the Marriott for their all-you-can-eat dinner buffet.  Yes, that Marriott.  However, you would not believe the level of security at this place now.  You can’t even drive within 100 yards of the lobby, and there were two security checks between the taxi and the front door, including metal detectors.  They do not mess around here.  By the way, the Jakarta Marriott is absolutely gorgeous.  Certainly among the more stylish, sheeshie, lavish, extravagant, whatever hotels we’ve ever seen.

    The buffet itself was great, like a big Vegas-style extravaganza, but instead of a section that says "Oriental," they have a section that says "Western."  They had separate stations for Japanese (sushi, including my (TP) favorite, raw octopus, which I thought was mushrooms until JM pointed out the suckers), Chinese, Indian, and Indonesian food, and all of it was very good.  We think that the secret is that the Marriott, like the few good buffets you’ll ever go to, only makes very small quantities of any one dish at a time, which is far more labor intensive (and hence expensive) but means that you’re not eating half-warmed-over lasagna from a vat.  Apparently buffets are all the rage among wealthy Indonesians, and all the big hotels have them.  If you’ve ever been to one of the giant buffets in the big resort casinos in Vegas, it’s like that.

    We also heard–but will not confirm this because we don’t want to get too excited–that the Mandarin Oriental Jakarta has a dessert-only buffet.  Given that the Mandarin Oriental is probably nicer than the Marriott, and that this alleged dessert-buffet would only cost 8 dollars a person, this could be deadly.

    Our beverage for the evening was a giant iced tea with a big old slice of pineapple in it.  Delicious.  Indonesian iced tea is wonderful to begin with…real strong brewed tea, ice cold, and you add a simple syrup that comes in a separate mini-pitcher.  Sometimes you can get iced lemon tea, which is a specialty, and comes with a lime as a garnish but lemon juice in the tea itself.  JM is working on a recipe for all of you back home.

  • Out of Gas

    The other day (Sunday) we went to the grocery store and bought a whole bunch of food for a couple of nice dinners this week.  We really broke the bank: $35!  We came home, put everything away, got all of our stuff prepared to make a coconut curry chicken dish, and then discovered that we were out of gas for our stove.

    Let us explain.  In Indonesia, there is no system of gas pipelines like in the US.  Gas comes in a big metal canister, about two feet high, that you physically plug into your stovetop, directly to the burners.  We had just been using the canister that came with the apartment.  Unfortunately, there is no gauge or dial that tells you how much is left, so, irrationally, we behaved as if it were endless.  (This is the Julian Simon view, named after the environmental economist who argued that since we cannot physically count all of the natural resources like oil in the world, it must mean that there is no limit to them.)

    OK, so here we are, out of gas.  First off, this was annoying, since we had spent an hour mashing up spices and hacking up a chicken, and had to get snacks from the convenience store for dinner.  Second, and more disturbingly, we had no idea what to do about it.  We didn’t know if you took it somewhere to get filled up, or if you traded it in like a grill’s gas canister in the US, or if someone came and filled it up for you, or what.  And, of course, it was in the middle of Idul Fitri, so no one was around to help us or tell us what to do.

    The next morning, I (tp) wandered around looking to see if any of the offices at the apartment were open.  They were not.  However, I did manage to talk to a nice security guard.  He told me that he’d "send someone up," but then remembered that it was Idul Fitri and no one was around.  But, as I trudged off, he called me and pointed at a barefoot dude on a bicycle pedaling down the street.  The claim was that this guy would get me a canister and bring it up in 15 minutes.  Knowing that I very regularly do not actually understand what is going on in situations like this, I said OK, and went back upstairs.  Not seven minutes later came a knock on the door.  Sure enough, this guy had a new canister, and he even installed it for me and took away the old one (still with no shoes).  It is apparent now that this is actually how you get more gas in Indonesia–you find some dude on a bicycle whose job it is to distribute gas canisters, which they get from the state oil and natural gas company Pertamina.

    As a final note, the whole cost for two months’ worth of gas in the new canister was $4.50.  Thank you, market-distorting government subsidies on fundamental household goods!