RESTAURANTS : Dewi’s Indonesian Hot Stuff: It’s Going Fast

It’s been nearly 20 years since I first encountered Indonesian cuisine. I was a participant in an Indonesian language program at a large Midwestern university, and several of us shared a house with the teachers--all native Indonesians with a love of cooking. I’ve forgotten most of the language, but I remember our dinners as vividly as if they were last week. Maybe they were better cooks than teachers.

Whatever the case, I’ve been spoiled; Indonesian restaurants rarely measure up to my standards. There is not a healthy restaurant representation of the world’s fifth-largest nation in Southern California. I doubt that a handful of good Indonesian restaurants exist in the whole country.

But there is Dewi, a small grocery store and kitchen hidden along a seemingly endless stretch of mini-malls and commercial properties in Orange. It serves food every bit as tasty as the dishes my teachers used to make. There is, however, one small catch: The restaurant will be open for just a few more weeks. Get there fast.

It is a modest place. Decorations are limited to a few reeds of bamboo, some tacky Indonesian scenes on canvas and three ceremonial masks that look as if they were bought at a fire sale in an airport gift shop.

If you’ve never had Indonesian food before, a logical starting point is nasi rames , a mixed rice plate with several dishes plopped on top. Dewi’s nasi rames comes with a choice of chicken or beef, telur , tempeh , ketoprak , atjar and serundeng . Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Telur is red-curried whole egg. Ketoprak is a mildly spiced soy bean cake, baked with a bit of chili paste, soy sauce and egg white.

Tempeh , another soy product (but denser, with a higher protein content), is cut into strips and deep-fried in chili sauce. I found it strangely reminiscent of sweet crispy walnut, a Chinese banquet dish.

Atjar is a cold vegetable salad, yellow from heaps of turmeric and dry mustard, and sweet-sour tasting from sugar, garlic powder and ginger. The main ingredients are cauliflower, green beans and sliced carrot . Serundeng is a condiment made from dried coconut, cumin, coriander and bay leaves.

I did mention chicken and beef, but I didn’t say the choice would be a simple one. Ajam panggang is barbecued chicken crusted with a dry chili paste. Beef comes in three colors; hot, rendang , glowing orange from coconut milk, ginger and chili; hotter, bumbubali , a darker orange from a sweet soy paste for added complexity, and hottest, empal pedes , literally “hot meat,” burnt sienna and strictly high-voltage stuff.

I can think of no other cuisine where a humble rice plate is a primer on the cuisine as a whole, but once you’ve tried this, you are ready for advanced courses. Satay ,--skewers of beef, chicken, pork and shrimp--have been adequately dealt with in various reviews of Asian restaurants. Suffice it to say that they are Indonesian in origin. Gado-gado is a salad of spinach, bean sprouts and broccoli drowned in the same peanut sauce served with the satay. It’s redundant to order both.

An interesting alternative is ikan bumbubali , cooked like the beef but made with pan-fried whitefish.

Also satisfying is bami goreng , an Indonesian staple. This is your basic Asian fried noodle plate with a slight twist: Indonesia is a devoutly Muslim country, so pork is not present. Large hunks of chicken marry with tiny shrimp instead, subtly enhanced by a dusty spice mixture. It ranks just below first-place Thailand’s paht Thai on my noodle roll of honor.

The chef here is Ismail Lubis, who is from the island of Sumatra, where the food is spicier than that of neighboring Java. His food has none of the cloying sweetness that makes so many perfectly good dishes unpalatable to the Westerner.

The owner is Edith Vredevoogt, an Indonesian woman of Dutch extraction from Jakarta, who prepares many of the snacks and desserts, among them lemper, a sticky rice roll filled with minced, curried chicken, then wrapped in foil to resemble an ingot of rare metal. Take some home.

She often makes meat croquettes, which I didn’t taste, and kue lapis , which I did. Kue is a traditional dessert in Java, and it defies description. It’s layered, bright-red and it wiggles. Better see for yourself.

Don’t leave without one of those refreshing iced drinks that Javanese cool down with on a hot day. The best is es cendol, a tall glass filled with jackfruit, coconut milk, green syrup from Holland and cendol --bright green bits made from cornstarch and pandan , a leaf from Southeast Asia.

Another favorite is es tjampur , with the ice, syrup, coconut milk, palm nuts, young coconut and grass jelly. It’s about as far from a malted as you can get on this planet.

Although Dewi is scheduled to close sometime next month, there is a second Dewi, in Huntington Beach, run by Vredevoogt’s brother and his Javanese wife. The chef is different and the food is considerably milder. Personally, I wish I’d discovered the Orange Dewi sooner.

Prices are low. Portions are spirited. Nasi rames is $5.50. Satay is $4.75. Main dishes are $3.25 to $5.50.

DEWI

1762 N. Tustin Ave., Orange.

(714) 637-1101.

Open for lunch and dinner Wednesday-Monday. Closed Tuesday. No credit cards accepted.

DEWI

9606 Hamilton Ave., Huntington Beach.

(714) 962-4446.

Closed Sunday and Monday. No credit cards accepted.