Before the Valkyries game, we decided to try out this Indonesian/Texas BBQ place as recommended by one of Andrea’s ex-coworkers when we saw them on Saturday (they were headed to the Valkyries game that day). The concept sounded very interesting. The original Fikschue in Alameda was number 44 on the Chronicle’s Top 100 Restaurants in the Bay Area in 2025. The line wasn’t too long (maybe 10 people ahead of us), but it was fairly slow moving as they prepared each order for each customer before they paid.
All four of seemed more interested in the Indonesian dishes rather than the BBQ although I have to admit the Dino Ribs that the couple in front of me ordered looked really good. Andrea P., Stanford, and I each ordered the Rendang Plate and Andrea only ordered the Ayam Bakar Plate so we would have something different. We also ordered the Batagor. The non-BBQ dishes like ours were all served out of chafing dishes and honestly didn’t look all that great.
The plate itself though was packed with a lot of different things. The Rendang Plate primarily featured the brisket in coconut milk and spices, but there were so many other thingson the plate including kale curry, shrimp chips, a potatot fritter, a couple sauces (green and red) and mound of rice topped with a fried egg and more red sauce and green onion. There were some good flavors, esp. from the sauces, but most everything was a bit of a mush (which is what it looked like in those chafing dishes). I liked the fried egg, but they did fry it over hard (yolk cooked through. boo!), but the sauce was the saving grace. The potato fritter just looked sad.
Andrea’s dish had the Indonesian spiced chicken and the plate was similarly packed although it had eggplant that was supposed to balado with sambal, but instead it looked like there was a tofu with sambal instead. Her rice was a coconut turmeric rice that was more flavorful than the rice I had. I think the rice and the green sauce were Andrea’s favorite parts of the dish. The chicken was ok – spices were nice, chicken itself was only ok, a but overcooked and dry.
There was also the Batagor which was Indonesian fried vegetarian dumplings. The dumpling looked a lot like a fried wonton (like in crab rangoon) with what was supposed to be a peanut sauce. I love peanut sauce, but I would not have guessed this was a peanut sauce. There was also a mild red chili(?) sauce on it also, but it was just all too sweet. And the stuffing inside the dumpling was just this gummy blob that i couldn’t really taste with everything else.
Overall, it was quite disappointing. I really wished for better prep on the dishes (although the spices and sauces gave some good flavors) or I had just gone with the BBQ. I’m assuming their brick and mortar location in Alameda produces better food than this location (although maybe not…).
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