MAD Modern Asian Diner Jakarta

Told you right! It's like each and every week, new restaurants are opening and the Jakarta's F&B venture is getting more and more colorful, but colorful doesn't always mean 'festive', sometimes the dark colors just wrongly applied. Anyway went to MAD Jakarta's press launching yesterday and couldn't wait to blog this because I want to introduce you guys to this new F&B joint in Lotte Shopping Avenue.

MAD which stands for "Modern Asian Diner" was born out of the mad but in a way genius idea from its founders: Dick Lee and Andrew Chow who thought that food is now a part of lifestyle, beside its main role as necessity. MAD restaurant is a part of the famous Singapore F&B group, Tung Lok which also handled some other well-known restaurants like Taipan (WTC Mangga Dua), Ming Dine and Chill (Epicentrum Walk) and the newly launched "My Humble House". Dick Lee is probably quite famous back in his hometown Singapore (yes MAD is originally from Singapore) because he's one of the judges in a talent show there. This particular restaurant is offering you selections of multi-dimentional dining experience (as what they claimed), but from what I saw from the menu it's mostly the fusion from Western and Asian cuisine, but don't worry guys, even though this was a press-launching, fortunately I still got the chance to try out some of the menus *nomnom* and that's why I'm blogging this! But before that, as usual: PHOTO-PROLOGUES!

ENTRANCE! The logo's inspired out of Dick Lee's face, I thought it represents a girl's face, but it was actually Dick Lee's face dressed in a Chinese-design crown, but anyway LOVE the logo!

Fresh flowers everywhere since they just officially opened for public around a week ago.

The interior of the restaurant was certainly like no other that I've seen before, it's very spacious with youthful, modern design touch but also unique and quirky, you'll see hip graphics everywhere, lamps rolling around the ceiling (see below), I wasn't feeling like I was in a restaurant, more like a loft with dining tables, but there's a quality that I like about it: they're very confident with their design. I bet this place looks more glamorous during the night. Just beside the dining tables, there's an open kitchen for everyone's eyes and to ensure yourself that nobody's spitting on your food.

Live music with percussion items made out of used tins and kitchen utensils. Nice.

Each guest was given this refreshing drink called "Strawberry Shortcake", LOVE this it indeed got that strawberry cake flavor infused to this drink, in a way like drinking a strawberry cake! It had a proper sweetness and sourness and presentation wise, as you can see, beautiful!!!

The service was really impeccable, the servers were really attentive, funny thing was that each row's supposed to be for five participants, I sat on the second row and there were only three people including me but they still serve the food for five people, get what I am saying? EXTRAS!

Mr. Yohan Handoyo, a wine expert and one of the owners of MAD Jakarta.

We got the chance to try out 4 food samplers: three appetizers and one main-course. Even though they were samplers, but I adore how they presented the food on the plate, simple but pretty. The first course was the appetizer samplers that consists of: Truffle Dumpling, Cream Crab Croquette and Spring Roll. The Truffle Dumpling hands down one of the best dumplings I've had in life, the skin was moist and on a perfect thickness, the filling was generous (more vegetable cuts) and the whole thing just burst in your mouth! A little glimpse of Truffle oil to make it better, the aroma of the Truffle oil just rose up the appetite!

Cream Crab Croquette
This was another fascinating delicacy, it was nicely cooked, deep fried with crispy coating, but not leaving the whole thing to be oily, loving the mustard dressing as it helped the play of flavor. Frankly speaking, I wasn't really capturing the crab flavor.

Spring Roll
This MAD spring roll was another thing to drive me mad in a pleasant way, technically it was simple but the flavor result was rich with the touch of freshness from the fresh ingredients. The spring roll skin was thin and moist, it was garnished with cucumber and light nut sauce. Well executed.

The appetizers were pretty impressive and the next to be served was the main course, they served us this Josper Grilled Wagyu Claypot Rice (IDR 198k), the rice was still hard (which is good) and me loving the dry parts sticking on the claypot's surface even more (bet everyone does). The wagyu beef was perfectly cooked, extremely tender and juicy and the egg was still runny and fresh, I love the runny egg texture, but one thing's missing from this dish, it's just that it's lack of that seasoning kick and the flavor was just not brave bold and brave enough for me, and it's relatively pricy for almost IDR 200k (before tax).

Mr. Yohan Handoyo and Mr. Tommy Irawan

One awesome thing about MAD is that the kitchen's equipped with a motoric-automatic wok! Easy way to wok the food and save some rupiahs to pay the kitchen staff's salary (JUST KIDDING!).

We were also taken to a quick tour of the newly launched "My Humble House" which was located on the fifth floor of Lotte Shopping Mall (the fine-dining areas), it's a Chinese restaurant and the concept was clearly different from MAD, it's more proper for family dining. My Humble House Jakarta serves mostly Chinese inspired menus and this particular outlet in Jakarta is their fourth outlet after opening in Tokyo, Beijing, and Mumbay before.

The seating capacity of My Humble House is around 200 people including 8 VIP rooms for a more private dining session with your loved ones.

Looking forward to come and have a nice dimsum time with my family.

I am completely aware that this is not a complete review as I only tried some of their menus but from what I experienced, they have pretty decent food but it also came with a relativey hefty price-tag. MAD is planning to open other branches in Bali and Surabaya so crossed fingers for that! GOOD LUCK!

MAD - Modern Asian Diner

Lotte Shopping Avenue 4th fl. Unit 33 (Next to XXI Cinema)

Ciputra World 1

Jl. Prof. Dr. Satrio Kav. 3-5

Kuningan, Jakarta Selatan 12940

021 - 2988 9499

Opening Hours:

Weekdays: 11 AM - 10.30 PM

Weekends: 10 AM - 11 PM

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My Humble House

Lotte Shopping Avenue 5th fl. Unit 1 (Next to XXI Cinema)