Krupuk, Sambal and Heineken

The standard rijsttafel is the thing to get if several diners want to share. On a previous visit, three of us ordered it and were delighted to find that the parade of dishes cost us a mere $10 apiece. Each patron gets a bowl of the rich chicken noodle soup called soto, followed by an ordinary egg roll. The shared dishes start with the chicken sate. Unfortunately, this is not as interesting as the beef sate. The chicken meat just can't stand up to the overwhelming flavor of the peanut sauce.

Chicken simmered in a yellow curry sauce is much more to our tastes. Gado-gado, a cold mélange of boiled vegetables and peanut sauce -- which my dining companions keep referring to as "the salad," since there are a few lettuce leaves on the plate -- goes quickly. The standout of the rijsttafel dishes is probably the redang, big chunks of long-cooked beef in an intricate Asian curry sauce.

"Garuda was the name of my favorite Indonesian restaurant in Holland," Jay tells me. It was decorated with potted palms and ferns, he says, and you sat in those giant peacock chairs. The old Dutch colonialists would go there in the afternoon to drink tea and eat rijsttafel until nighttime. "I always imagined these gray-hairs were talking about how many servants they had back in Indonesia," he says with a chuckle.

Yanti's is everybody's favorite Indonesian restaurant here (actually, it's the only Indonesian restaurant in Houston that I know of). Take some friends and try the rijsttafel. It's a great way to get a sampling of Indonesian dishes, and the dining room is really quite comfortable.

But the truth is, I had a lot more fun eating krupuk and sambal and drinking beer in Yanti's dark, cool bar. I highly recommend the bar side of the business as a place to hobnob with former spies, old Asia hands and Suharto amigos.