Kintan (Pacific Place): Extraordinary Yakiniku restaurant, offering top quality meat cuts

Simply put, Kintan is an exceptional Japanese (and Korean) barbecue restaurant. The meat is top notch, the seasoning is delightfully tasty. It's a familiar yakiniku concept; you grill your own meat using the sauce provided.

Typically I don't prefer self-cooking restaurants, mainly because it requires a bit of work and usually the taste isn't optimal if you don't cook it right. But this is a pleasant exception. I don't eat that many self-barbecue restaurants, but Kintan is arguably the best I've ever been in.

Dill (Plaza Indonesia): Colorful cafe serving all-day breakfast & casual food, with unexceptional taste

Dill looks a bit out of place at a glance; it's colorful place with strong character, in the middle of a shopping mall. In terms of design & decor, the joint looks as if it was plucked out of Senopati or Kemang and forcefully put into Plaza Indonesia. It has a very photogenic & inviting appearance.

The 'gourmet cafe', as it calls itself, serves all-day breakfast, home-made juice, pastries, cakes, specialty coffee, and all sorts of simple comfort food. They have so many things to offer, though most of the dishes are nothing new.

Moi Bistro (Gunawarman): Small Vietnamese-French restaurant, serving delightful Pho

As I said before, it's relatively difficult to find an exceptional Vietnamese food in Jakarta other than the usual chains such as Pho 24 (which is not necessarily bad). Moi Bistro attempts to take Vietnamese cuisine to the 'high street' of Gunawarman/Senopati, competing with reputable heavyweights in the Jakarta food scene.

A blend between Vietnamese & French cuisine is not uncommon. To my understanding, there is quite a French influence in Vietnam's culinary identity as France once colonized the nation. I'd say a more accurate description of Moi Bistro's style is Vietnamese with French influence (instead of French-Vietnamese) because essentially it's more of a Vietnamese restaurant.

The place has some personality; there's an effort to create a brand for the restaurant, the decor is well-thought, the dishes are rather unique. Moi Bistro leaves quite an impression for its customers.

Pizza Barboni (Plaza Festival): Proper thickness & plenty of topping

If Pizza Barboni's newly opened Plaza Festival branch is any indication, then the franchise has successfully built a sizeable customer base from its first parlour in Kemang. Pizza Barboni will possibly get most of its customers from delivery orders (which I think is probably the case in Kemang as well), but it does have a nice shop tucked in Plaza Festival, Kuningan.

While it's very low profile, the restaurant is quite cozy and worth a visit. The pizza itself is a very good reason to.

H Gourmet (Gunawarman): Reexploring American cuisine, the right way

When H Gourmet says American cuisine, it doesn't limit itself to the very-common burgers, fries, and fried chickens. This is one of the things that intrigued me the most; despite the aforementioned American dishes being widely known to the world, most of us know little of what's beyond that. Chances are, we don't know much of some of the dishes being served in H Gourmet.

I think H Gourmet's 'American' dishes leans a bit towards Louisiana comfort food. There's a bit of mixture between Spanish, English, and something else. There's even Caribbean.

But there's no summarizing the H Gourmet experience without talking a lot about its decor. Rustic, dusty, a bit of vintage touch, somewhat resembling a garage. The establishment captures the 'warehouse' feel impressively. This is a concept that many restaurants attempt to pursue, but I haven't seen it done as well as H Gourmet. This restaurant is something else.

Le Cafe Gourmand (Gunawarman): Comfortable, chill, non-pretentious

While the rise of luxury cake & coffee shops such as Cacaote & Amber is something to be celebrated, I can easily empathize if many find them intimidating. I've been to Cacaote, for example; granted, the cake was nice, but frankly there's too much bling for me. There's pressure to dress up every time, design was a little too feminine, and dare I say it's somewhat tacky.

Le Cafe Gourmand offers an almost similarly high-end feel, but a little less on the glitter side and more on the relax & enjoy. Picture this as a place you go to have nice & chill weekend after-lunch date, or a quick ice cream cone fix with friends. Some tables even have families with children. It's a very comfortable, almost lazy, cafe that you hang around in for hours.

RoCa Restaurant at Artotel (Thamrin): A hidden establishment with seriously great food

I thought this was going to be just another 'chic' places that serve half-hearted food. But anyone thinking the same thing are in for a pleasant surprise. There's no underestimating RoCa's cooking; they're mostly dishes you've heard somewhere else, and the choices are few, but taste is consistently good.

First of all, though, RoCa is a part of Artotel which, quite obviously from the name, is some kind of a hotel that attempts to be very artsy. I think it's also where hotel guests have breakfast, which makes it even more surprising that the food is of top quality.