Miscellaneous Food: Jakarta Part Three

Our last day in Jakarta was a blur after the eventful weekend. One place that I toured, which isn't exactly about food, though it does have a very romantic tiered top-deck restaurant, was the boutique hotel at Kemang.


If you can deal with the traffic and the inconvenience of the Kemang location itself-the street is long and narrow, with a great number of eateries and shops but it should be pedestrain only, as it's so narrow the taxis are forced into a virtual stampede, belching exhaust all over the walking tourists and teenage locals, the Kemang Icon is a great place to stay.


It has a prime location in Kemang, right on the one intersection and an understated, artistic decor. The first couple of floors of the building house very cool shops, amongst them, a bag store with some drool-worthy exotic skin handbags and a gorgeous shop called Part One by Edward Hutabarat, who makes modern dresses out of rare batiks from the Indonesian rural villages.


The hotel is on the middle floors and I was wondering, doesn't that make them pretty noisy? There are rooms as well as suites and they start from about $300USD I believe. Some of the room decor is a bit expected but some of the other parts are still sleekly beautiful and dark.


This room in particular, the suede headboard and the contrast with the luminous shape of the light and the smooth ceramic of the bathtub was just gorgeous.


I was very impressed and if I had that kind of money to spend, I'd definitely come back to try a stay or maybe to get a drink at their roof-top restuarant.


This is not a good photo because the lighting was just terrible but what you can appreciate is, they put up a glass barracade around tiered wooden steps where the tables are set up. The service is discreet (and almost invisible in their black-shirted uniforms) and the air is cool, scented by the potted mango trees and the lit city of Jakarta swarms far under your feet.