When you want to get your hands on some good local food, you must have guessed that you have 1000‘s of choices in The Big Durian.Jakarta serves up an almost endless variety of local/regional food, whether it’s a menu of one or two killer signature dishes they’ve been dishing out for more than half a century or a mix and matched offering of Indonesia’s finest. I hope you like noodles. Mie Keriting (Curly noodles), to be precise. Circa 1954, from Pematangsiantar (North Sumatra), began with humble beginnings serving up their delicious Mie Keriting dishes, then opening its stall in North Jakarta some 36 years ago on a small stall right beside the pluit sakti raya road. This place is usually visited by generations of hard core Mie Keriting fans, who acknowledges that this is the ‘original’ Mie Keriting. Even though the 10 to 15 stalls right beside claims to be the ‘original’ ones you can tell by the amount of people rushing into No.57 that they are the Real McCoy.

If you have been visiting this restaurant since the days you were wearing your primary school uniform, you realize that times stands still here. The cook, Pak. Jono has been throwing the noodles in the same steaming pot for 18 years.

The red long plastic chopsticks and the same white noodle bowls is used to serve the delicious bowls of Mie Keriting. On top of that even the gentlemen walking around the restaurant has been selling magazines in the same spot for almost two decades. But the best part of it all is that when you walk in here between 7 am till 6 pm at any day, their noodles consistently blows your mind away. Their secret ingredient: abundance of the freshest eggs and flour plus these Mie Keriting have the fingerprints of the chef who has been kneading, fluffing and slicing the noodles since 5 am in the morning. The noodles are served in 2 portions, normal and large sized with a very generous portion of either sweet chicken, pork char siu or a combination of both. We must say the beef broth that accompanies the noodles are just simple flavorful and delightful. If you like your noodles spicy the only way to enjoy this dish is by pouring generous portion of their home made vinegar with chunky slices of chilies.

Mie Keriting is a truly legendary eating place.