Jayakarta Restaurant

About Us

Nestled at the foot of the Berkeley hills, only blocks away for the UC Berkeley campus, Jayakarta Restaurant has been serving the East Bay and the Indonesian community for seven years (2012).

We’ll admit it…. We are simply a “hole in the wall”.
Believe it or not, we are only a staff of 3 people, 4 at the most, with only one head chef. …But we are capable of running at the speed of a busy McDonalds or Chinese restaurant with many more employees than we have. So when we are busy (normally 6-8PM on weekends) and fully packed with customers and lines of To Go orders, please forgive us if our service becomes erratic. With only 3 people, it deserves an award for not buckling under the pressure… something that we have been doing for seven years straight.

Our job is simply to bring you the most authentic cuisine you could find on the streets of the capital city of JAKARTA (Betawi) and nothing more. That’s it.

If you’re looking for an ENTIRE menu in the style of another region of Indonesia (Bali, Medan, Menado etc..), you WON’T find it here. Remember from a region of 17000 islands… there is so much diversity in term of style of food that any restaurant can offer… so our FOCUS is on a style common in Jakarta ONLY.

We are not here to win awards for all-around best restaurant… win awards for best designed restaurant or awards for the best ambience… If you want something like that… trust us… there are many restaurants in the Bay Area who have and can qualify for that and then some.
What we DO do best here is bring you the best food most Jakartinians encounter on a daily basis. In that regard, we are the BEST restaurant in the WORLD with only Greater Jakarta being own par with us.

This is the reason almost every evening and on the weekdays... our restaurant is still packed with people. Generally, our regulars consist of ex-pat Indonesians and Chinese Indonesians, students from UC Berkeley, local Berkelities and Dutch people formerly from Indonesia or have tried this food in Amsterdam. We are de facto “restaurant of choice” for the Indonesian embassy in the United States and have held cabinet member and member of the presidential entourage (Yudhoyono) within our walls and have even had the occasional American movie star drop by (Julia Roberts). This for a “hole in the wall.”
So please… if you like to experience how it feels to eat on the streets of Jakarta… by all means try our food. If you don’t like it… it’s totally understandable, it’s not for everyone.

And as they say in Jakarta…. Terima kasih.

Let the magic begin.



Meet the Chef

Mama Talen, originally from Jakarta, the capital and largest megacity of Indonesia, is both the head chef and owner of the Jayakarta Restaurant. A daughter of a successful merchant in the quaint neighborhood of Jakarta Utara (North Jakarta), Mama Talen learned cooking from her mother’s own baking skills at an early age. By her teens, Mama Talen had become a renowned baker in her own right, specializing in the Indonesia donuts/cookies such as Risoles, Keroket and Gemblong (a type of Indonesian donut originating from the Sudanese town of Cikalong). Using her father’s know how and her mother’s cooking thumb, it became a popular enterprise and she was soon churning out 50,000 donuts a day, making her donuts the delectable of the day throughout much of Jakarta Utara’s 2 million residents. However, due to political turmoil during the early 90’s, she was unable to expand her business throughout Metro Jakarta and instead left her home country, settling in the United States, specifically the Bay Area, bringing with her, her skills in authentic Indonesian cuisine. By the late 90’s, Mama Talen was the head chef of a popular Indonesian restaurant, serving both American movie stars and Indonesian dignitaries alike. By 2005, she finally opened her own restaurant in the quaint neighborhood of Downtown Berkeley and among local Berkelities, it was a hit, becoming another American success story. And for roughly 40 years of culinary experience, that’s amazing. Cheers.

Products Carried: San Miguel, Sapporo, Singha, Tiger beer, Rendang, Nasi Goreng, Rijsttafel, Rijstaffel, Dutch, Netherlands, Halal, Nasi Ayam Penyet, Smash Chicken, Satay, Tek-Tek, Mie, Roti, Prata, Tempe, Goreng, Gado, Ayam, Betawi, Bakmi, Bihun, Teler, Cendol

Brands Carried: San Miguel, Singha, Tiger Beer, Sapporo

Cuisine: Jayakarta Restaurant is the premier Indonesian restaurant the San Francisco Bay Area and quite possibly the United States. Our job is simply to bring you the most authentic cuisine you could find on the streets of the capital city of JAKARTA (Betawi) and nothing more. That’s it.

Reservations: Jayakarta Restaurant does accept reservations over the PHONE (510 841-0884) or via email. For more information please go our website: www.jayakartarestaurant.com

Payment Options: Cash, Visa, Master Card