Tambo Ciek
We’re currently in Melbourne not able to travel internationally. When you can’t travel, what’s almost as good is finding a great international restaurant. We were looking at local Melbourne Indonesian restaurants when I noticed that one of the most highly recommended was actually right in our neighborhood. That’s how we discovered Tambo Ciek.
Specials
We walked in and saw the specials board:
- Lontong Sayur
- Siomay Bandung
- Ketoprak Ciragil
- Cilok
- Soto Mie
- Sate Badang
- Bakso Tenis
- Bakso Tetelan
- Aneka Takjil
Obviously this place expected you to be at least familiar with the dishes, a promising start. Fortunately the people behind the counter were very friendly and happy to explain the menu to us. We settled on the two bakso and a cilok to share.
Bakso
Bakso is a meatball noodle soup with vegetables. Bakso “tenis” has a big meatball (the size of a tennis ball - thus the name) that has a whole hard boiled egg in the middle. Bakso tetelan has small meatballs and bits of stew meat, fat, and tendon. They both come with both rice and wheat noodles, and greens. Each diner adds condiments like kecap manis for sweetness, sambal for spice, and or vinegar for sourness.
Cilok
Cilok are glutinous tapioca flour balls in a peanut sauce. The balls themselves are soft and very chewy, and the peanut sauce is sweet, savory, and spicy. I thought they were also a little fruity - Debbie guessed tamarind, but I think it was more citrusy maybe lemon juice or lime juice. In any case it was delicious.
There were lots of local indonesian people in there, and they sell snacks and ingredients as well as hot food we’ll definitely be going back!
