There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Go Curry Pacific Place

An Englishman will go to great lengths to track down a curry house – even if this means going into one of Jakarta’s most-ostentatious shopping malls, the ridiculously over-the-top and snobby Pacific Place, a refuge from the city’s mayhem for Jakarta’s 1 percent. After finally finding the restaurant tucked away on the fourth floor, I was feeling incredibly peckish and got down to giving our orders.

Go Curry Pacific Place

Ordering a curry here is easy. You specify the type of curry sauce – I chose Rogan Gosh – the type of rice (white, yellow, buttered?), how hot you want it (from mild up to raging hot), and the type of topping (chicken, fish, vegetarian etc). Some variations are possible. You can pay a little extra, for example, to have naan bread instead of rice. The curries promptly came and were soon devoured…

Go Curry Pacific Place

Verdict

The Restaurant: bright, clean, cheerful, small, not claustrophobic (good views of inside the mall!)

The Taste: for convenience food, the curry was excellent. Not a particularly large serving but the dish was well-presented and quality ingredients were obviously used.

The Service: pretty useless. The waitresses forgot to bring a couple of drinks and were generally inattentive and very slow.

The Price: Very expensive! A curry and a lassi will cost you around Rp120k. The lassi itself costs Rp30k before all sorts of taxes are added. Outrageous. For this price you may as well have the Sunday brunch at Kinara in Kemang – it costs about the same, you can eat as much as you want, and you don’t have to go into Pacific Place shopping mall!

Go Curry - Pacific Place
Jl. Jend. Sudirman Kav. 52 - 53,
Jakarta
Telp: (021) 5140 2750

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