Where to get indonesian food in the gta
I went to Bulk Barn last week and one of the staff there (who recognized me because I literally come at least once a week) asked me what my background is.
Now whenever someone asks me this question, I almost always play the guessing game with them, because I am amused or curious as to what their guesses are.
You see no one ever ever guesses Indonesian. Never. Someone guessed Hawaiian before but never Indonesian. So my Bulk Barn bestie was surprised when I told him I was Indonesian.
Then he asked another set of common questions I get: “What is Indonesian food? Are there Indonesian restaurants here?”
For the longest time whenever someone asked me this question, I would shrug and say unfortunately not. Growing up here in the GTA, there was no authentic Indonesian restaurants around (disclaimer: this is my opinion). There were restaurants who would sell maybe their take on some Indonesian dishes, but it never brings me back to eating those dishes back home.
So where do I get my Indonesian fix? Well growing up, my mom would cook some Indonesian dishes at home. Even that though was not very often, because if you knew my mom, you’d know she didn’t like to cook (even though when she did cook, it was always delicious). Here is what my mom was amazing at though: making friends with other Indonesians who are amazing home cooks. We were so blessed to be surrounded by an Indonesian community, and my sister and I grew up consuming delicious Indonesian food made by other people in the community.
So yes, lucky us to have access to amazing Indonesian food…but the thing is it’s hard to get other people to try delicious Indonesian food. There were no one really selling them to the public to try.
However friends, if you ask me that question now, I can give you an answer and direct you to different places/people that you can get your Indonesian fix. There’s been so many different Indonesian food pop-ups lately, that I knew I needed to make a blog about it! Cause friends, Indonesian food is DELICIOUS. I might be biased, but trust me you need to try it at least once!
Now here’s another disclaimer before we go any further:
The places I’ve mentioned below are picked by me because they have been tested and tried by me. There may be other Indonesian food pop-ups or restaurants around, but I haven’t tried those and I wanted to give you a personal list with places that I have tried myself. So if there are other places not mentioned here, please comment in the comment section below so others can know & I can also try! This list will be ongoing and I will add on whenever I try new things. So here we go friends!
SAMARA KITCHEN
This is pretty much the only Indonesian sit-down restaurant my family go to for authentic Indonesian food! The restaurant is pretty small (for now hopefully?) and of course at this time you can’t dine in, but Samara is open for take out!
This family-run restaurant serves amazing Indonesian food and if you want to order food, I’d suggest you call way ahead because they get really busy! If you are interested in ordering from them and don’t know where to start, I did a full Foodie Review on this place with my go-to dishes. I’ll be doing another review/update on Samara soon with additions of some of my favourite things to eat from there!
I really love this place and order from here at least every other week!
Kedai Jadoel TO
Some of my friends created this pop-up to bring together a selection of different Indonesian dishes brought to you by a variety of different vendors. Although you can say I may be a bit biased, I (and my family) have tried some of their food and it’s really good!
Their menu changes periodically and they do not have an open order every week. You are so in luck because they have just put out a new menu this week with a limited order time frame. If you are interested, check out the link above!
INDOTOSNACK
I am a snacker y’all. Actually my entire family are snackers. So if you are like us and want to try some Indonesian snacks, you should check out IndoTOSnack. They make a variety of different Indonesian snacks and you can pick them up at various pick up points in the GTA. Their menu also changes from time to time!
I am a HUGE fan of their pastel. What is pastel? It’s this yummy savoury pastry with a delicious filling of noodles, eggs, carrots and more. They also give you chili on the side for those of you who like an extra kick like me. I LOVE these. In Indonesia, they would sell these in the pasar aka wet/dry markets or out on the streets. My aunt would get these and we would devour them for breakfast when we visit Jakarta. IndoTOSnack’s pastels remind me of the ones I ate in Jakarta. So so good.
Jen has ordered another thing from them this week and we will let you guys know how it is!
Sambal TTC
This group is another new IG pop-up that I have recently encountered. They serve different Indonesian dishes and some of their menu items changes weekly. The cool thing about this group is that they use a different cooking method to cook the food. When I was doing my cooking course at George Brown, we had the opportunity to play around with the sous vide machine and it was super cool! So the French term “sous vide” translates to under vacuum. Basically it’s a cooking technique that takes whatever you’re cooking, say a steak, and seal it in an airtight container (usually a vacuum sealed bag). You would then take this vacuum sealed steak and cook it in a temperature controlled water environment. Why do sous vide? Well your end product is perfectly cooked all the way through at a certain temperature. So with that steak, you can cook it to say a medium all the way through!
So this group takes different Indonesian dishes and use this method to cook them. So I’ve tried their sous vide rendang and ayam goreng, and both were delicious! Also they sell a lot of different sambals (aka chili sauce), as their name would suggest. I haven’t myself tried their sambal but am planning to, so I will update you guys when I’ve tried some :)
Extra shoutout: IRECT FOOD FUNDRAISER
This extra shoutout is to my church community who have been doing food sales periodically throughout the year. There are definitely some really yummy food sold like nasi campur (indonesian “mix rice”), nasi gudeg (another traditional indonesian rice combo dish), pempek (Fried fish cakes, SO GOOD) and more. There are no set times when the food sale happens, so if you are interested in getting notifications for this, let me know!
So that’s my list so far!! For those of you who have been wanting to try Indonesian food, go and check out these places!
Comment below or message me if you have questions :)