Safehouse Jakarta

Went to Safehouse last week for lunch with the awesome new friends from Shopping Magz! It wasn't just a lunch lunch, because the purpose of the visit was actually to cover this new restaurant because... *drumrolls* I am teaming up with Shopping Magz as a contributor for their monthly e-magazine! Looking forward for more adventures and definitely... LOTS OF EATING!

Safehouse is a new restaurant as well as hang out venue in the city located in the heart of Kuningan area, well not exactly "heart" because it's actually located at the Mega Kuningan Circle, Bellagio Mansion to be exact just across Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The restaurant which was officially opened for public on November 2013, had a very urban, chic, in a way clean while still sounding youthful and fun. It was also pretty spacious with two floors, the second floor was the showroom for the owner's (Enrico Nicolin) shoe label, SomeAreThieves.

The naming was pretty funny because the shoe label was actually "SomeAreThieves" but it's located in the "Safe House"

The bar area. They have pretty good cocktail range as I looked at their menu, but didn't get the chance to personally try it.

The second floor is the showroom for SomeAreThieves by Enrico Nicolin.

This is for free!

The executive chef for Safehouse is the Italian Chef, Tomasso Gonfiantini and I gotta tell you man, this person, who clearly didn't look like a chef (honest POV and good thing because he has a youthful spirit and he's fashionable) was actually and honestly VERY talented and unforgivable friendly and nice. He used to work for Pepenero Bali for four years and now expanding his adventure with SafeHouse! I joined his activity in the kitchen from the preparation to the garnish, he's just very smart in explaning everything, thanks to him, I even knew few new cooking methods that I never knew before (keep reading and scroll), more on that in Shopping Magz.

Safehouse mostly served Italian food and some with a little twist of Asian from the ingredients and the flavors.

Seafood Conchiglie Pasta
Conchliglie is the kind of pasta with the snail's shell form, one of the main advantage of this kind of pasta is its ability to scoop the soup, if the pasta happens to have a soup base. From what I experienced at the kitchen watching Chef Tomasso cooking live, making pasta wasn't hard at all, maybe for some, but this one certainly off the list! There's something about watching Chef Tomasso cooking that encouraged and driven me to go to the supermarkets and buy everything to cook! I have always adored chef's ability in the kitchen, especially those who indeed made everything from scratch. It took around 15-20 minutes to cook this and spring onion garnish to ring the bell.

The pasta was cooked perfectly, perfect here refers to 'al dente' for me, the seasoning was great and the tomato cream soup cooperate really nicely with the pasta. Since this is a seafood pasta, I adore the generous amount of seafood given to a portion and how the seafood distributes not only the touch of flavor, but also the scent and the overall performance! This is an absolute must try. If perfect is a 10, this might be 8,5!

WHAT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT COOKING PASTA! (by Chef Tomasso Gonfiantini)
- When you made a pasta with soup, DO NOT forget to include the water from the pasta cooking to the cooking pan because it's believed that the water could do a great job in blending the pasta with the seasoning and the oil.
- Depending on what pasta you're making but the recommended cooking time should be generally around 12-15 minutes to reach "al dente", 12-15 minutes starts when the heat of the water started reaching medium to high.
- When you're cooking the pasta, DO NOT forget to give salt to the water! So you're basically cooking pasta in a hot salty water.
- The recommended pan to cook pasta is the Saute pan. That one you see in the TV shows with long handle and round shape.
- If you're planning to use parsley for your pasta, Chef Tomasso recommends using Italian parsley as it has a great quality, but if you're still up for the local ones, that's fine.

Safehouse Hand Cut Burger
After learning some pasta cooking methods, I also managed to learn some new things about cooking burger (told ya keep reading!). Some facts actually surprised me. The Safehouse Hand Cut Burger was apparently not the hardest to cook, you just need to pay more attention in making sure that you don't overcook the patty or selse it's going to hard and dry. The sauce you're looking at right now is chili mayo sauce, which by the way tasted beautifully, but the chef just needed to put that somewhere else because this is making the food looking less photogenic LOL. In a nutshell, this burger was beautiful! The buns were soft, the meat was cooked beautifully and very lightly seasoned. It's just common-not-so-common, thanks to the chili mayo I guess.

WHAT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT COOKING BURGER! (by Chef Tomasso Gonfiantini)
- It's recommended to use beef with great quality like Angus beef and it should be around 70% hand cut beef meat (slice top) and 30% with fat.
- Apparently it's a surprise that you DO NOT NEED to use anything for the patty to stick together! I used to think that chefs do or add something for the patty to stick along while it's being cooked.
- During the beef patty cooking, use your finger to make a hole in the middle! Can you guess what for? It's to indicate that the opposite side was being cooked perfectly, (and again how can you see that?) - because there will be blood later in the hole! That's when you put your doubt to rest!
- To make the burger buns soft and fluffy, put them in the oven for 20 seconds, not a rocket science.

The star of the day, Chef Tomasso Gonfiantini! Bet he's an eye-candy for you ladies out there, get away from your screen, you might be drooling, but seriously he's just very friendly, very polite and very nice to be working with!

Trivia: he's such a camera shy, he was so embarrassed when he knew he's being recorded.

My visit to Safehouse was SPLENDID! The staffs were really attentive and helpful during the day and they're just seriously very helpful, thank you guys so much!

Special thanks to Chef Tomasso Gonfiantini for the amazing food he cooked that day, for the knowledge given and also for simply being who he is! Thanks to the lovely team from Shopping Magz, first experience and terrific to work with :).

Safehouse // SomeAreThieves
Lobby Level, Bellagio Mansion
Lingkar Mega Kuningan, Across Ritz-Carlton Hotel
Jalan Mega Kuningan Timur 2 Kav. E4 No. 6
Kuningan, Jakarta Selatan 12930
021 - 3005 5010
Opening Hours:
Mon - Thu: 6 AM - 12 AM
Fri - Sat: 6 AM - 2 AM
Sun: 8 AM - 4 PM
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