Bistronomy: Valentine’s Dinner Part I

To celebrate Valentine’s Day this year, I and Mr. K decided to have a romantic dinner at Bistronomy. It might not be the newest restaurant in town or anything, but I had always wanted to go there for a romantic occasion and nothing is better than February 14th. 

Bistronomy Jakarta is one of the fine dining restaurants under Kawano group, a Japanese Food & Beverage business group that has been engaged in the fields of restaurant services, including The Grill, Sakana, and also Kado++. They are known to be outstanding upscale restaurants with great atmospheres, high quality food and ingredients, combined with exceptional services.

For the Valentine’s day, Bistronomy had special set menu themed “Movielentine” with tagline “Cuisines from the Big Screen”, because their group of Japanese chefs took the inspirations from some box-office movies and put the food into a set menu. There were options of Single and Couple menu, but since I took the Couple menu for dinner, so this is the one that I am going to write about.

The couple set menu costed about IDR 500K++ for 5-course menu, including 5 minutes of free Tarot reading by a professional reader, so it was a VERY good deal considering the venue, the cuisine and everything, seriously.

On the 14th, we arrived there around 6.20 PM, and luckily it wasn’t crowded yet so we got an empty spot in the valet parking area (BTW, valet parking there is free). We proceeded inside and were stunned by how beautiful the whole place is! I mean, I’ve seen pictures and everything, but come on, noone really can imagine that such beauty and elegance can exist behind those “normal-looking” walls, right? From the street/outside, the restaurant looks just like other residential houses around it, blended in very well with them so it’s quite easy to miss it, actually. 

Since we arrived quite early, it wasn’t totally dark yet so we immediately took some pictures. And as usual, photos galore because everything looks so beautiful I just have to put lots of them here, LOL!

When we got inside, we were immediately greeted by the person who looked like the manager, and he asked whether we had made reservation or not. Of course we did, in fact, we did it like wayyyy too early because we were so afraid we couldn’t get a table since Bistronomy is quite a popular spot to enjoy a Valentine’s dinner according to some food and news portals. Mr. K who made the reservation by phone was somehow already remembered by the manager (and he even put efforts talking in Japanese with him, what a service!), and turned out he was the one who talked to Mr. K on the phone. He really was even more friendly in person, and after assisting us to our table, he explained about the set menu and gave us the card for the Tarot reading session with the number 1 on it as we were the first one to have the Valentine’s dinner set menu that night. After he left, a waiter came and lighted a candle on our table, and voila, the romantic dinner started!

The salad was served in two wine glasses, which later were poured into a plate with dressing inside. They only use the freshest vegetables and we could tell just by looking at the colors of the leaves. The avocado were sliced into big chunks and gave the nice colorful combination in the plate. Oh, don’t forget, avocados are very healthy because they are rich of potassium and omega-3 fatty acids, not to mention nourishing the beauty of our hair and skin. The salad was DELICIOUS. I mean like, REALLY DELICIOUS. It was just a salad, but it wasn’t. Sorry if I confuse you, but the freshness of the vegetables combined with the perfect dressing (which I believe had lots of garlic involved) made it really different. It was very, very nice like I had never expected, at all. I demand this to be included in their permanent menu, period.

Minestrone is thick soup originated from Italy and usually made with vegetables, sometimes added with pasta or rice. I have only eaten 2-3 different minestrone in Jakarta’s restaurants before, and am not really a fan of it. This one was not an exception, although I found myself liking it after a few spoonful of the soup. Overwhelmed by taste of tomatoes, it was softly sour-ish but light enough to prepare my stomach for the next course.

Big chunks of beef were served with cuts carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, and green peas, do you need anything else? The beef chunks were like, the best I have ever had so far, no kidding! The meat were so soft, tender and I even dare to say “fragile” because it was too soft I had to be extra careful when picking them up with my fork. I was so amazed by that because no matter how I cook meat with any pressure cooker available in the market, I have never had meat that soft and tender. The stew itself was very savory, with distinctive taste of milk and butter (and possibly cream).

I thought, it was “just” another red-sauce pasta, that’s all. But boy, how I was wrong! When I tried the tomato slice, I was frozen for a moment. It was SOOOOO GOOD that I wanted to cry. You may think I am exaggerating things now, but I am not. The tomato itself was already very good, like it was marinated for a long time with the pasta sauce or something. The tastiness of the sauce was really absorbed into everything on that plate, including the spaghetti. With the additional coarse ground black pepper, you got all tastes altogether; salty, sweet, sour. The spaghetti was cooked into perfection with really nice and chewy textures, kept moist without being wet, just perfectly done. It might look not satisfying in portion, but it was just a camouflage because the pasta was actually quite a lot but didn’t look like it because of the shape of the plate. This was served on a long, narrow plate, which is so damn cute, but took hell of time to take pictures because the angles were quite difficult. 

This was simply the best of the best french toast I have ever had in my life. Yes, it was. The french toast was so soft, moist and fluffy, almost felt like chiffon cake rather than toast. Served with orange jam and vanilla ice cream, it was simply heaven on earth that even dieters can’t resist. The sweet desserts were accompanied with selections of tea or coffee, which I preferred tea and Mr. K took Americano. What a sweet way to end our Valentine’s dinner. 

It was such a blast. We really were satisfied and couldn’t be happier that we picked Bistronomy out of so many dining places in Jakarta to celebrate our special day. Thank you very much for the great experiences, we will definitely come back anytime soon!