September 6, 2011 | Closed, French Cuisine, JAKARTA, No Pork, South Jakarta

Last month, I had a food photography assignment at a newly opened restaurant in Kemang area, located in a new catchy building designed by Tan Tjiang Ay, called Kemang 89 (just across the road from Kemang 88). I love the building design and I instantly fell in love with the restaurant design the first time I saw its high ceiling with glass walls adorned by french inspired illustrations. Madeleine Bistro serves French-inspired cuisine at a quite reasonable price. So several weeks ago, we and several friends went there for a break fasting event.

At first, we’re served with a complimentary ta’jil of mixed berries drink. After everyone arrived, we started to order. We shared the appetizers and desserts, and each of us ordered something different for the main course, so we can taste a litle bit of everything. We ended up ordering nearly everything from their soft launching menu. So here’s what we ordered that night.

Entree
• Seafood vol au vent 65K
  Puff pastry parceled mixed seafood served with spinach and bechamel sauce. Good presentation and taste. I especially liked the spinach with bechamel sauce.
• Madeleine’s escargot 65K
  Garlicky buttered snail served with duxell madeleine and sundried tomato tapenade. A twist on the classic escargot dish that tasted quite delicious and disappeared pretty quickly after it was served.

Soupe

• Mushroom Cappuccino 40K
  Creamy mushroom soup served with hard boiled quail egg and truffle milky foam. To be honest, it didn’t look appealing. I think they should put the soup in a coffee cup/soup bowl to make it more interesting, instead of just pouring it into a deep and wide plate. It was delicious though.

Plat Principal

• Olive-capers salmon 110K
  Olive-capers marinated salmon roll served with cauliflower quenelle and prawn emulsion. I love this dish, especially the cauliflower quenelle that at first I thought was mashed potato.
• Australian striploin 150K
  Sauteed sliced striploin of beef and mushroom tossed with creamy gravy. I only got to taste bits of it, but it was quite good.
• Duck Confit 85K
  Perigord duck leg, preserved in its own fat, served with fennel-orange salad. A classic and delicious dish, I really liked the crusty duck confit and the orange salad.
• Red currant lamb chop 145K
  Red currant mustard crust lamb chop served with olive mashed ratatouille vegetables. They ran out of lamb chops that night, so we tried this on our next visit. I haven’t tried this kind of lamb chop before, and at first, I didn’t quite sure that red currant can go well with lamb. But it turned out to be a perfect match. I love the combination and the taste complemented each other.
• Home made Gnochi 75K
  Home made potato gnocchi tossed with mix wild mushrooms in creamy sauce. The sauce was great, but the gnocchi were definitely overcooked.

Dessert

• Trio madeleine cake 40K
  Assorted flavors of assorted nuts, chocolate and raspberry madeleine cake with chocolate fondue 40K. This dessert is the bistro’s namesake. I tried Japanese style madeleine before at Bonjour Pattiserie. It had a smooth and melt-in-your-mouth sensation. But these trio were quite different. The texture wasn’t as smooth as the Japanese one, but the filling were surely interesting. I love the one filled with nuts, but their chocolate and raspberry ones were also good.
• Chocolate temptation 45K
  warm chocolate fondant served with pistachio ice cream and berries coulie. The presentation is interesting, but when I sliced it, the filling didn’t melt as expected from a lava cake/molten chocolate. Maybe the timing was a bit overdone. But overall, it tasted delicious.
• Madeleine mouse 40K
  Strawberry, white chocolate and blueberry mousse in canneloni tuile. Looked good but the taste was quite ordinary compared with other desserts. 🙂
• Macadamia semifreddo 40K
  This is not listed in the menu yet. Shaped like a pyramid covered with chocolate, with generous macadamia nut inside, this was definitely my favorite dessert of the night.

Overall, we’re really satisfied with the meal there. The ambience of the place is quite nice, if there’s no smokers around. Some would say romantic and there are several good spots for taking pictures. Plus, the price we paid is quite reasonable considering we’re having French dinner in a posh place in Kemang area.

Madeleine Bistro
Kemang 89
Jl. Kemang Raya 89
Jakarta 12730
ph +62 21 71794538

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