Find Mountains of Turmeric Celebration Rice at Haymarket’s Indonesian Newcomer

Medan Ciak has been a CBD drop-in for Sumatran dishes for a decade. Char kway teow, nasi lemak komplit and nasi kapau are just the start. Actually, head chef Harjo (who prefers to go by his first name only) was adding so much to the menu the team simply had to open another restaurant – welcoming Temu Kangen to Haymarket.

Harjo leads the kitchen at both Medan Ciak and Temu Kangen, and every recipe is his. In Haymarket, the menu is “totally different”, not sticking to any one island. Dishes arrive from all over, with Harjo calling special mention to North Sumatra’s Medan and West Sumatra’s Padang, as well as Java’s Surabaya. And, matching the large Muslim population in this part of the world, Kangen’s menu is halal.

“We make everything as traditional as possible here,” Harjo says. “Surprisingly we have about 60 per cent non-Indonesian [customers] – we have local people here, because they know Medan Ciak already.”

Those regulars travel 850 metres for the results of that dedication to tradition: red-hot sambals and a generous serve of nasi kuning. “It’s turmeric rice, which we make in a cone shape. In the past, this dish is for all good occasions – like your grand opening, birthday, any happy events. In the past we did not have a cake, like a Western cake, so they used the turmeric rice for a celebration.”

The sunny yellow rice – fragrant with coconut milk and lemongrass, fittingly wearing a banana leaf “party hat” – is hedged with sambal-topped eggs, grilled beef ribs, wok-charred noodles and a scoop of stir-fried tempeh. Or maybe grilled chicken or beef rendang. You choose your proteins, vegetables and sambals from the stocked-full bain-marie. “It’s cone shape, like mountains,” Harjo says. “The goal is, you can get as high as the mountain.”

Nasi kuning shares the title of most-ordered dish with nasi gurih pandan bakar, or pandan grilled rice. “Rice is cooked with the pandan juice then we grill it in a banana leaf,” Harjo says. Your charred little parcel arrives with your choice of proteins, too.

“Temu kangen” is a Bahasa phrase combining “meet” and “longing”, referencing that feeling when you cure your homesickness. So it’s fitting the pick-and-mix-style nasi padang – plain steamed rice, protein, a mix of earthy curried veggies and sambal-topped eggs, all served on a banana leaf plate – is a fixture here, too. “It is a very popular dish in Indonesia. Like, if you ask Japanese they have sushi, if you’re asking Vietnamese they have pho. In Indonesia, you have nasi padang.”

The final highlight is the nasi rames ayam geprek, hailing from Central and East Java. The heaving plate is bolstered by bakwan sayur (veggie fritters), but stars a crispy chook and red-hot sambal. “It’s just like KFC, but boneless. After we fry it, we smash it, and then we brush with chilli sambal. We make our sambal as authentic as possible. We don’t do it according to the locals [in Sydney] – just as authentic as in Indonesia. It’s very spicy.”

Temu Kangen
33 Ultimo Road, Haymarket

Hours:
Daily 11am–10pm

@temukangensydney