This week Jonathan Gold visits the venerable Indo Café, newly reopened and remodeled after a damaging electrical fire. Palms' original Indonesian restaurant, Gold lauds the sumptuous interior's "plush bench seats, dark wood and feng shui for days, screens and antique cabinets, a burbling urn-fountain and soft gamelan music," before he gets down, dirty, and explicitly detailed over Indo's authentic halal cuisine. In describing the urap, Mr. Gold pulls his metaphors from the laundromat, (in a good way): "Sweetness and penetrating bitterness, fleeting perfume and a sort of persistent, almost human reek...akin to the smell of a beaded angora sweater...from the bottom of a pile at a vintage shop. If you were going to wear the sweater, you would probably take it to the dry cleaner first, or at least put it in the sink with some Woolite, but we are talking about a salad." But Gold saves his choicest words for Indo Café's fried chicken "cooked with coconut water and brown sugar before its final trip through oil, [it's] particularly good here, with skin as crisp and fine as the top of a crème brûlée and flesh almost turgid with juice.... The chicken is at its best as ayam penyet, served in a heavy stone vessel with chile sambal and a double helping of sliced cucumber." [LAW]
First Bite: Philippe Chow[LAW]
Dear Mr. Gold: Take your parents to Allston Yacht Club [LAW]
