Dining at a top restaurant is about much more than just the food on your plate. In Beijing, think Capital M, Temple Restaurant, and – dare we say it – Starbucks: setting is key. It’s all about matching the mood to the food, while the right interior creates character, atmosphere and even a recognizable brand. It can also house a small wildlife sanctuary, if you so desire.
And so we have Padang. Sometimes you think you know every little nook, cranny and oddity in your neighborhood, and then something like this suddenly leaps from the bushes. Padang is the largest city on the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and its eponymous Beijing restaurant might be the largest in town. (Official accolades include making the top 50 restaurants, ranked by atmosphere, on Chinese listings website Dianping. And that’s out of 96,708.) It’s located in the Shimao Department Store on Gongti Bei Lu and was set up by a local businessman who fell in love with Indonesian cuisine on frequent trips there.
Before we see Padang, we hear it: the chirping of dozens of caged parakeets welcoming guests through the door. The interior has a kind of palatial-banquet-hall-meets-rainforest-eco-lodge vibe, complete with reptile house accoutrements. On a between-course safari, we spot a crocodile, flying fish, a tarantula, a few snakes and some jellyfish. They’re not on the menu, though.
What is on the menu is a huge range of authentic Sumatran dishes. Highlight is the beef rendang (RMB118), cooked for four hours with coconut and lemongrass. It’s spicy – like Thai and Malaysian – but oilier than those neighboring cuisines (which should please many Chinese palates). Not in a heavy, slimy way, however – more a tinned tuna refined oiliness way. Then we order the ikan bakar colo colo grilled fish (mainly because we want to say it out loud), a dish thats exuberance manages to trump even the decor, given that it successfully marries good taste with its eye-catching appearance. The nasi goreng seafood pineapple rice (RMB58, below) and beef satay (RMB58) complete the set of Padang classics.
Photos by Noemi Cassanelli
Yet the most memorable part of the evening is our adventure to find the bathroom. We are led down a leafy corridor, which must be at least 50 meters in length. Reaching the end, we start to hear some commotion. Peering our heads round a corner, half expecting to see a caged rhino, we in fact see a full-blown wedding ceremony taking place. They’ll probably be honeymooning in some other wing of this maze-like venue.
We arrive back ten minutes later and cool off with a happy soda (RMB26), a combination cherry and apple fruit juice, condensed milk and Sprite, obviously. Thankfully alcohol is available, which you might need to deal with the sensory overload of the wildly eccentric Padang.
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