Gastronomique: Where We Got Crabs.

We were once slightly embarrassed at Swan Oyster Depot: our dining companion had stopped the counter person from removing the brains in her crab. How dared she? Not only did he happily comply, but this Italian-American guy started to tell her how it is a shame people don’t eat it, how in Japan it is called kani miso, and to give us all the crab’s brains of the subsequent orders of other customers, for a huge complimentary feast. Batavia Garden just leaves the brains in the crab, without any prodding. We ate every bit, sucking on the claws, licking our sticky fingers with glee. And we ended up being charged only $7.50, for what qualified as THE BEST DEAL IN THE CITY, period. It was such a steal actually that on our second visit, Batavia Garden had bumped up the price to $10.95 (not updated yet on line), making it -- hold on to your seat here -- the most expensive plate on the menu.

We can hardly fault them: we felt slightly guilty eating such an excellent dish for so little. Especially since the place is not low rent at all: the restaurant, in the back of the building, faces a garden, hence its name, with light guirlandes on at night in a big tree, and plenty of luminosity through the veranda during the day. While we would not pick the apple green color scheme, or the artwork on the walls for our own place, the dining room is bright, comfortable and welcoming.

The evening waiter was perfectly charming too. At first, we doubted the Indonesian credentials of the house, solely based on our crude racial profiling. He was the face of the house, and he was not Indonesian. Then we realized that he needed the help of a learn-Indonesian-quick guide to communicate with the kitchen, and he had been chosen precisely because the other people involved could barely speak English. For instance, the chain of communication broke much earlier on our second visit, when our waitress was as authentic as hoped, and we had to enlist a bilingual customer to ask her some questions beyond the basic ordering.

While we’d just go there for the crab, the other dishes did not disappoint: a tamarind soup called sayur asem ($2.50) came in a shrimp broth with al dente vegetables; gudeg jogjakarta ($7.50) was a coconut milk based stew with green jackfruit, tofu and bits of chicken in it. The jackfruit is a typical Indonesian fruit which has pretty much the texture of an artichoke heart. A triplet of marinated lamb chops was called rusuk kambing a la Batavia Garden ($9.95). The dulai kambing ($7.95) was a sweet lamb curry, full of coconut milk and basil leaves. The only dish which we would not order again would be the baked half-shell green mussels with mayonnaise. Baking the mayonnaise in the oven did not strike us as a good idea. Everything else we could hardly find fault with.

Drink-wise, Batavia Garden surprised us again. The very basic wine list tops at $15.95/bottle. And they serve drink specials that we haven’t seen anywhere else: arak mango ($3.95) was some kind of mimosa with mango juice. More interesting was the es doger ($3.50), described as Jakarta’s traditional drink with sliced coconut meat and fermented rice in syrup. It looked like a sundae in a classic diner,or a Trader Vic cocktail, with a maraschino cherry on top. It really should be listed in the dessert section. But it is one of the many dishes at Batavia Garden that took us on some exotic escape, far, far away from the fog and the city.

We strongly advise to follow a dinner at Batavia Garden with Marco Polo ice cream: the ice cream parlor is a half-dozen blocks away, and offers flavor like jackfruit that will echo the food at Batavia Garden. We did it on both our visits, and had scoops of black sesame or taro root ice cream. Marco Polo is every bit as good as Mitchell's, but without the lines.

Batavia Garden
Open for lunch and dinner.
339 Taraval Street @14th ave
664-7603

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