Indonesians dress their salad head to toe, like their shopping malls and their women.
This is - hands down - the worst dressed country I have ever been to.
The photos are often quite good and the salads seem happy: crisp and colourful and fresh ... and ... well ... dry.
Apart from an odd restaurant near my apartment (which laminates its food), most mid-range restaurants in Jakarta (even nice ones) use photos of their food on the menu.
So I point at the photo as I order a salad. Howevr, when it arrives at my table there is a whole different product staring at me. It looks like the salad suddenly caught on fire in the kitchen and the chef panicked. This is not dressing. This is dousing.
I've investigated the salad dressing situation with a few well-travelled Indonesians and no one seems to notice. I think they are protective of their dressing.
"Don't you think that they put a lot of dressing on the salad here?" I ask.
They look at me blankly, which stupid me misinterprets as a request for clarification.
" ... you know ... like ... how in Indonesia ... they usually put more dressing on the salad than they do in other countries?"
By the time I get to "usually" I've either lost them or insulted them. It's hard to tell with Indonesians - especially Javanese - you've insulted them or pissed on their shoes.
In Indonesia you must always remember to order your salad with the dressing on the side.
I have learnt this lesson so at Pizza e Birra tonight I didn't forget to order it correctly.
This is what arrived.
That glister to the salad is not water and the concertina pattern on the top is clearly the work of dressing.
I called the waiter back and leant against the left edge of the passive-aggressive bell curve. "Dressing on the side?" I said to him gently while waving a finger around my salad.
He smiled nicely and pointed to a ramekin sitting north east of the plate. It was brimming with extra dresssing.
I couldn't deny that he was right. I'd ordered the salad. I'd asked for dressing on the side. Both had arrived as asked.
I smiled and thanked him, too stunned to ask what the fucking burrito was doing there on the top. I knew it wasn't backstroke.
This concoction was too oily to eat, even without dipping into the extra litre of dressing up there in the ramekin. The chef must have seen my order and thought "this guy must really like dressing - let's give him some extra on here as well"
This close-up isn't very good but you can still see the oil pooling around the edges of the tomato.
I think I have to blame the Chinese for this. Not for their culinary skills, but for their whispers. There are a lot of Chinese living in Jakartra and "dressing" is very close to "drenching" when whispering recipes around a circle. There's no other explanation.
