*WARNING : PORK DETECTED*
Several years ago, my friend took me to a home-made-food restaurant serves some dishes originally from outside of the island where I live. Manado, to be exact. It’s in North Sulawesi, which is the island north of Java. The restaurant is in Jogja but serves dishes from Manado. The owners came from Manado, I think, since this pair of husband-and-wife have a very fluent Sulawesi accent.
The name is Lokon, like the name of a volcano in North Sulawesi, probably named that way to bring the ethnic feel of North Sulawesi itself. The banner of this restaurant is quite worn out so I didn’t recognize it well at first. My friend also asked me to go to ‘oma ne’ (it’s Javanese, translated to Bahasa Indonesia as ‘oma-nya’, or to English to ‘the oma’ since, probably, it’s a calling for aunt / auntie in Manado). So, that’s it, up until now, I never say Lokon as its original restaurant name, but Oma-ne instead.
Here, the menu is not too many. They only serve about 5 or 6 kinds. Two of them is the babi kecap (soy-sauced pork), and kinawok. Those are two dishes that my (other) friend and I ordered last time we went there. The place is quite simple as well, not too fancy but not too shabby as well. The beverage is also standard, like mineral water, ice tea, and orange.
This is what I had last time, soy-sauced pork
Soy-sauced Pork
(I know, the English name sounds awkward, but I’ll stick to it)
Some soy-sauced pork dishes I’ve ever eaten use watery soy-sauced soup, but here, it’s more like a sauce than soup. It’s quite oily (but delicious), thick, with dark brown in color, indicating there’s quite a portion of soy-sauced dipped in there. Even so, the taste is not overly sweet and not spicy at all. Somehow it’s very well-balanced with a dimmed garlic-y flavor. The pork itself is tender, not very soft but not that chewy. Just right.
Usually, or probably, mostly the dishes from Manado are spicy, or even blazing spicy for average hot-food eater. My friend from Manado said that he sometimes even can’t handle the hotness of the dish due to overdose chillies portion. Kinawok is one of them. This one is what my friend ordered and I’m allowed to try a piece of kinawok pork.
Kinawok
Now, this food is a total contradiction to what I’ve had. Color is bright orangish yellow, soup isn’t really thick (more like oil and mashed spices, mixed). The taste is quite salty, not overly salty, though. The spices really take their part well in giving amazing taste. However, for me, it’s too hot (again, I have almost 0 tolerance to spiciness). The pork’s tenderness level is the same like what I had. If I can handle spiciness well, I would love this dish more than I do now.
Actually, I’ve tried some more dishes here but I don’t have any pictures of them so I think, I will talk about it as the 2nd part of Lokon. I ordered soy-sauced pork because the dish I usually order is sold out so I had to choose an alternative choice.
Stay tuned for my next foodie trips, give comments if you have any ideas for me or my blog posts, give like if you like it and see you soon.
CHEERS!!
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Thank you. :D*
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