[EVENT] Jakarta Gourmet Festival 2014, FX Sudirman, Jakarta

FX Sudirman is currently holding a special event called Jakarta Gourmet Festival 2014, which is happening in the whole month of May. The event covers many culinary related activities from food vouchers, cooking classes, food market, and so on. 

This time, I am gonna write about my experience using the Special Dining Vouchers, which is one of the special promotions in JGF that is valid until the end of May. 

Before I begin, I have to say that FX Sudirman is one of my favorite malls in Jakarta. For some people, maybe it’s not too interesting compared to other bigger shopping malls, but well, I like it. And because it’s like, super duper close from my house, so I go there quite often (along with Senayan City and Plaza Senayan). When I heard that FX Sudirman is holding this event, I was so ecstatic. I had high hopes on this event because I went to some culinary events in malls before (even in Bali) and always had good times there.

So, I went there last week and I just had thing image in my mind that since it’s a “festival”, there would be, at least, a focused area where people open food stands or market, or whatever with signs stating that there is a festival. But hell no, I spent quite sometime walking from the lobby until the 5th floor finding nothing. It is weird because if you see from the street, the mall put many banners all around promoting this event, and when you go inside, POOF, nothing. Well, I visited during weekday and it felt like there was no event going on, and I hardly found any sign, banner or whatever inside the mall. 

Finally, after walking around trying to find some clues, we finally found a banner in front of the elevator on the 5th floor, and thank God, we got the freaking clue that we needed so bad! So apparently we had to go to customer service on the 1st floor for more info, so we proceeded right away. The customer service kindly helped us with the Special Dining Vouchers, which we just paid for IDR 10K each for value of IDR 20K. In short, it is like you get 50% discount. The vouchers are valid for some food tenants in Grab to Go section on B floor and Food Factory on 5th floor. 

The options are not much, and we thought it is kinda disappointing. So much for a “festival”. From the Grab to Go section, the participants are Boba Inc, Onigiri Futago, Mochi Mochi, Juice 88, Yen Pao; while from the Food Factory, there are Momochi, Niqie Kebab, and Jagoan Baso Malang. Honestly, I was like, WHAT?!, but well, maybe I expected too much.

Because we thought it would be troublesome to go back to the 5th floor, we decided to just use the vouchers on the B floor, just one floor below the lobby. With 5 vouchers (IDR 50K), we brought back 4 onigiri from Onigiri Futago and 2 regular milk tea (Honeydew Milk Tea and Jasmine Green Tea) from Boba Inc. Quite a bargain, wasn’t it?

Overall, my experience using the Special Dining Voucher was smooth and easy. But HOW to get them was kinda challenging. My brother even joked that it was like scavenger hunt, LOL! But well, still crossing my fingers for other activities like the weekend cooking classes and food trucks! Will write more about those activities soon.