I’m sure many of you long-term Jakarta residents are familiar with Chili’s. The well-known Tex-Mex franchise has been a firm fixture in the Sarinah Building since 1996. After 13 successful years, a revisit in order to check that the nachos were still performing was definitely on the cards. Inside, Chili’s remains a well laid out, intimate restaurant with a separate bar area. The waiters are friendly and attentive and I was glad to see that the restaurant’s tradition of posting the newspaper’s sports’ pages up in the rest rooms continues to this day!
Onto the food then, rest assured that Chili’s familiar nachos, tacos, fajitas, burgers and steaks remain in all their huge portioned glory. Chili’s are always trying to up their game however and so I elected to try some of the restaurant’s new items on our recent visit. We started with the Spinach and Artichoke Dip (Rp.61,900) which turned out to be a highly cheesy affair. Thankfully, unlike many of the city’s blander eateries, the cheese actually tasted of cheese and I enthusiastically scooped up the dip with the supplied basket of chips.
Moving on to the main course, I plumped for another new menu item, Fire Cracker Dorry (Rp.72,000). This Thai influenced dish consists of a fresh fish fillet brushed with a sweet and spicy glaze and garnished with red chilli tapenade and sesame seeds. The link between Thai and Mexican cuisine comes through in the dishes delicious use of coriander. The fish was both succulent and spicy and the sauce singularly toothsome.
The bar area at Chili’s is still a pleasant place in which to imbibe a few beverages of an evening. Chili’s has dispensed with happy hours in favour of an all day, buy one-get-one-at-half-price deal. Chili’s huge range of marvellous margaritas is still present and correct and includes the restaurant’s signature Presidente Margarita (Rp.85,000), a not so subtle but effective blend of Jose Cuervo, Gold Tequila and Cointreau. Drinking a couple of glasses of this is something akin to sipping one of Douglas Adams’s fictional Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, the effect of which is supposedly like, “Having your brain smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.” Lovely. Chili’s, still doing it after all these years!