AMKC Atelier - Plaza Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia

February 05, 2019

Going into a fusion restaurant sometimes can take you away positively or negatively or sometimes just meh. When we were meeting with a friend for dinner one night, she suggested AMKC. It wasn't throughly busy when we arrived but as soon as we ordered our meals and started chatting, tables were starting to get filled rather quickly. Some diners would come just for the cake and coffee. Simply to chill I guess..

One of AMKC's best selling dishes would be their Truffle Choux, truffle mushroom filling in a small choux. The buttery choux was not oily but was rather light and the filling had a creamy texture accompanied by the light truffle aroma, which I prefer my truffles quite strong.

It would be something I would order again and it's quite a fun entree to have to start off your meal I reckon.

Spaghetti Carbonara served with pork belly and crackling. Another twist, another fusion on a traditional Italian pasta dish. The carbonara had a heavy cream based sauce which made it a bit thick but I didn't mind it as it wasn't sickening. The crackling pork was more of bits of crackles everywhere which I found to be quite a good idea instead of having one big piece that could even be hard to crack or chew or just too fatty sometimes.

So having the crackling just on top of the whole dish allowed you to have them within the carbonara.

Sadly they were quite stingy with the pork belly as from what I remember, there was only one or two slices of it and didn't actually feel like it was enough for a whole dish. So as soon as you twirl your spaghetti a few times and have a few bites of the pork belly, then.. suddenly, the next thing you know, you're just left with the spaghetti and the crackling.

And if you mix your pasta around, you would start to have soggy crackling.. unless you eat the whole dish quickly, then maybe not.

It would be something I would order again next time or maybe it's time for me to try their famous sea urchin pasta.

Ordering a burger for a change, instead of pasta dishes, they did have a couple of different burger options available but we chose their Grilled Pork Belly Burger served between basil bread. It also had a slice of very very thinly slice of tomato and one cos lettuce. It was rather stingy.

The one dissappointment would be the lack of sauce. Yes, they did say on the menu that it had cheese sauce, but to be honest, it was more of a smear or like a very thin layer. Other than that, the whole burger was dry.

The basil bread was not too bad but you couldn't exactly taste the basil or smell its aroma.

Spaghetti Aglio Olio with fresh clam, rock shrimp and calamari. Having that seafood twist in the traditional aglio olio was a nice change and I did feel that it was rather a light pasta dish to have.

The amount of prawns and calamari was quite generous however I did feel the only thing missing was either freshly grated parmesan cheese or cracked black pepper.

The spaghetti was cooked well but it wasn't as oily as the usual aglio olio and with a simple dish like this, I think a bit more olive oil would've done the trick.

Some of their cakes are quite well-known due to its uniqueness in taste and options. Such as their Es Teler Cake which was a soft and fluffy pandan chiffon cake with a vanilla and avocado custard, topped with coconut jelly and jackfruit.

The cream overall was also not too sweet which suited us well but there was quite a lot of it surrounding the whole cake slice I do have to say. The jackfruit was an interesting mix with the coconut on a pandan chiffon base but it worked.

Just to give a brief background, Es Teler is a traditional fruit cocktail in Indonesia.

Lapis Strawberry Cheese was somewhat a replica of the traditional Lapis Surabaya cake however it did not do the original justice. The butter chiffon cake base was fluffy and light with strawberry jam and cheese on each layer. Although the indonesian flavour of the jam and cheese may be strong, but I did find the cream too gluggy.

The chiffon cake did blend nicely with the grated cheese and didn't give me that sickening sweetness filling. So the good thing about this was the sweetness of the jam and cream was balanced with the cheese.