Having deleted facebook, JakChat is my new waste of time and I have decided to post short reviews of every kitchen I eat out in this thread.

is that a threat? go ahead. make my day.

KIKUGAWA - Japanese Restaurant
Jl. Cikini IV No. 13, Cikini
Jakarta Pusat. Phone: 3150668

1 bir: 35,000
1 vanilla ice cream: 10,000
1 lemon tea: 12,000
1 lime - set: 95,000
1 sashimi - set: 57,000
Taxio: 20.900
TOTAL: 200,900

Tucked away down a side-street near the train overpass under which Piss Salon hunts at night for fresh umbrella boys crouches KIKUGAWA - Japanese Restaurant since 1963.

You'll probably never go to this restaurant, and I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to get to it. But if you are walking around Cikini and are hungry, it's ok.

KIKUGAWA - Japanese Restaurant since 1963 has a unique atmosphere and decor. After crossing a pathetic little moat you find yourself in something between a Javanese fish restaurant for tourists and some approximation of a Japanese restaurantThe walls are lined with uncomfortable bamboo piping, like the thatched fish restaurants you see wrongly mocked up in Jakarta malls. It looks as if some Japanese people landed here, perhaps in 1963, couldn't find any traditional Japanese furnishings and so mocked up their memories in bamboo.

They played loud atonal kubuki music, which I enjoyed but I imagine most people wouldn't want to listen to while sitting in an empty restaurant. There was one other table taken apart from us but then it was five-thirty to six pm so you shouldn't take that as any baring on the place's popularity. The low-rise (bamboo) dining table was reserved.

I had the Lime set: a platter of tempura, sate, soup with tofu and onions, sushi, sashimi and miso soup. The griled sate skewers were okay, the soup rustic but a bit too strong. The sashimi and sushi was good, if a little on the thin side, it was room temperature, fresh, and not fridge chilled like at so many Japanese joints. They used real pickled ginger, which is rare even in top class Japanese restaurants.

My bird had some icecream to start with, then a little sashimi, which she enjoyed even though she pasted it all with cheap commercial sambal.

Overall, not bad, but nothing special. Like spending an hour with a slightly eccentric but dull middle-aged half Japanese half Indonesian man in his aunts 70s kitchen. They had a western toilet.

Romance Café
Jalan Jaksa

The most inappropriately named bar in Jakarta. No one drinks coffee here and the largely male patrons that frequent this joint are as far away from Mr Darcy as Jalan Jaksa is from Mayfair. But if you are looking to hear tall stories with no discernable point or end and with very little possibility of being true, then this is the place to go. Beer's cheap.

So are the clientele.

Put up you dukes and fight like a man Sir. I won't have that.

Fight like a man? I don't believe that is the Romance way. Shout a lot and occasionally throw some beer or the entire glass at someone - that's the Romance way.

Yes I've observed the working class oafs and yob oiks despoiling themselves in Romance Bar and Cafe. How I miss the club house...Dinky Bates, Strangely Brown, Wobbler Puttnam and the chaps.

Bally Jerry, pranged his kite right in the how's-your-father; hairy blighter, dicky-birded, feathered back on his sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harpers and caught his can in the Bertie.

Hmm, yes.

marmz loves it really

As my continued absence displays.

Bally tenpenny ones dropping in the custard!

Nope. There have been some horrific bouts in Romance over the years. One of the bloodiest being when Johnny Handsome was taken down, leaving the tiles covered in claret.

That.Is. Very. Funny.

Good one.