The line-up includes Balinese-style chicken soup as well as regional styles from across Java and Sumatra not commonly found outside of Indonesia.
Soup is for winter. Soup is for losing weight. Soup is for saving money. Soup is for using up leftovers. Soup is boring. Soup, in short, has something of an image problem.
Yet when considered through an Asian food lens, soup quickly goes from zero to hero.
Chinese hotpot restaurants are popping up around the metropolitan area at a terrific rate; ramen and pho establishments rise and fall according to the intensity and quality of their broths; and Burmese ex-pats will gladly run the Mitchell Freeway gauntlet for their fix of mohinga, the country’s legendary fish stew. (Sometimes their destination is Girrawheen’s prosaically named Mum’s House Burmese Kitchen; other times it’s a low-key lunch bar in Wangara.)
Indonesian diners, meanwhile, are no strangers to the joys of soup. Or, as the dish is commonly called in Bahasa: soto.
“Soto is soothing,” says David Wijaya, the Jakarta-born chef-owner of Ah Beng Indonesia at Westfield Carousel.
“If I’m sitting down and having dinner with my family, a complete meal means that there’s a meat dish, veggie dish and soup on the table. When that happens, everyone is happy.”
In an attempt to share some of that water-based happiness with those outside of the Indonesian community, eight Indonesian restaurants across the metropolitan area are banding together to launch Soto Hero: a November-long celebration of the countless styles of soto found throughout the archipelago.
So while local eaters and regular visitors to Indonesia may be familiar with soto ayam (chicken soup), Soto Hero gives diners opportunities to taste variants and regional styles that can be hard to find outside of the places they originated in.
Haystack Cafe in Wangara, for example, is serving a soto Bali that starts with base genap (say it bah-seh rather than base geh-nup) the island’s famous turmeric-rich spice mix base.
Modern Indonesian restaurant Kayumanis in the CBD and Thornlie’s Bakoel will both be presenting their version of Jakarta’s famous coconut milk-enriched beef soup, soto Betawi. (Java, the Indonesian island that Jakarta is located in, is also the birthplace of rawon: a black, murky beef soup flavoured with candlenut as well as Ah Beng’s contribution to Soto Hero.)
The crew at Maylands’ newly opened Mrs Lim Kitchen, meanwhile, is bringing a soto Medan – a chicken soup with plenty of rich coconut action from the capital of Sumatra – to the party.
But if you were curious about other soup styles from Indonesia’s largest island, Siti Cuisine at the Gosnells Railway Market food court can oblige via its soto Padang: a clear beef broth bulked out with vermicelli noodles. Rounding off the line-up is Langford’s KwikFud Cafe (soto ayam lobak: a radish, chicken and noodle soup from Bogor City designed to feed construction workers fast) and Raja Gurih which is serving another Bogor dish, soto mie ayam.
In short, the Soto Hero line-up is a fine way to explore Indonesia without taking your passport out of your drawer.
Although each Soto Hero restaurant is excited about showcasing regional dishes and flavours, the program’s overarching goal is celebrating WA’s burgeoning Indonesian food scene and Indonesian cuisine more broadly.
Soto Hero is the first program launched by the newly established Indonesian Culinary Association of WA (Wijaya is the group’s president). The group is already making plans for future promotions and events.
Soto Hero runs throughout November at Ah Beng Indonesia, Haystack Cafe, Kayumanis, Bakoel, Mrs Lim Kitchen, Siti Cuisine KwikFud Cafe and Raja Gurih.
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Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
