Indo Cafe

If you live in southern California, you have a choice of hundreds, maybe thousands of Chinese, Mexican, Thai, Salvadoran, Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese restaurants sprinkled throughout the city. Not so with Indonesian food. I can name all the Indonesian places I've heard about in LA on one hand, but luckily, Indo Cafe, an Indonesian gem in west LA, will give you an excellent Indonesian sampling.

Gado gado is probably the most known Indonesian dish. It consists of a salad of veggies, egg and tofu covered in a peanut sauce. Indo's sauce is thick and rich and the veggies are crisp and fresh. Gado gado is popular, but their other dishes are more exciting.

One of the best dishes I've had anywhere is Indo's lamb satay (satay kambing) with lamb chunks marinated in a sweet soy sauce to awesome effect. The little black lamb chunks become flavor bombs, sweet, tangy and savory. This is a fabulous dish and one I keep going back for...it makes me salivate just to write about it. (Okay, too much information, I know).

Also excellent are the pan fried noodles (kwetiau goreng), fried fish cake with noodles in a sweet sauce (empek empek) and the various curries, especially the lamb, and the amazing fried rice (nasi goreng). Meals are served with a pungent and essential fermented fish condiment which is thicker than Vietnamese nuoc mam.

There is an intriguing list of desserts including various concoctions containing avocado, jackfruit and durian, none of which I've yet tried.

So, if you are interested in trying Indonesian, you can't do much better than Indo Cafe.

Indo Cafe
10428 1/2 National Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 815-1290