The Indonesian Restaurant Where Dessert Comes First
Photo by Michael Raines
Pasar is one of the 20 Best New Restaurants of 2024. The restaurant receives this year’s Best Dessert Program award in honor of chef Feny’s crave-worthy Indonesian desserts, intended to be snacked on throughout a feast of savory dishes.
Chef Feny identifies as a “snack person.” The owner of the dazzling Indonesian-Chinese restaurant Pasar in Portland, Oregon, grew up going to bustling morning and night markets in Jakarta with her mother, and she designed her restaurant to capture the spirit of these spaces—shelves are loaded with patterned sculptures, bags of snacks, and sentimental trinkets. Her menu also pulls inspiration from these markets, where she became enamored by push carts loaded with dainty kue—vibrant bite-size confections eaten in one or two bites.
Inspired by those childhood memories, Feny wanted the desserts on her menu to be compact, subtle in sweetness, and defined by a wide range of textures. The colorful kue at Pasar are intended to be integrated into the meal—not just eaten afterward. “Oftentimes, Indonesian customers will order sweets along with their meal and ask me to bring it whenever,” says Feny. “It isn’t necessary to eat your meal first and then the sweets. That’s just part of the culture.”
No dessert at Pasar is quite like the next. They range from sticky and rose-colored (cantik manis) to chewy and bright purple (talam ubi). Feny is intentional about the ingredients she uses, often swapping out traditional components for others that provide a new taste or texture to her desserts. She manipulates a range of flours that differ in density and extracts that furnish a distinct aroma to produce a series of mesmerizing bites.
Here’s how Feny creates five of Pasar’s snackable desserts.
Talam Ubi
The standard version of this steamed treat is made with yam, but Feny uses purple sweet potato for its striking color and denser consistency. This violet base is topped with a white layer consisting of tapioca flour and coconut milk—a coalescence that becomes delectably chewy.
Putu Ayu
Pandan—a tropical plant native to Southeast Asia—imbues this spongy cake with a vanilla-like flavor, grassy aroma, and verdant hue. “I joke that in Indonesia we don’t have vanilla bean,” says Feny, “so we use pandan.”
Cantik Manis
Mini tapioca pearls and cubes of yellow jackfruit give this dessert a touch of sweetness and body. Its pudding-like mouthfeel is owed to a combination of mung bean flour and coconut milk cooked slowly over the stove and shaped in a flowerlike mold.
Piscok
Feny wraps firm small bananas, dark chocolate, plus a sprinkle of sugar into lumpia wrappers and gently dunks them into a deep fryer. She makes sure to go easy on the sugar so the filling doesn’t melt out. The piscok rise from the oil bronzed and crisp.
Klepon Ubi
When delivering these sticky mochi-like balls, Feny provides instructions with a side of caution: “I always tell customers to put the whole thing in their mouths so it doesn’t squirt onto the person in front of them.” Flavored with orange yam in place of traditional pandan, the dough is shaped and stuffed with coconut palm sugar, then rolled in coconut flakes for an explosion of flavor.
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
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