Awang Kitchen

Elmhurst's Indonesian dining room for a crowd: big tables, big portions, and a menu that tours the archipelago with a Jakarta accent. This is the place to learn bakso, the meatball soup sold from carts across Java — here in several sizes, up to bakso beranak, the 'pregnant' meatball that hides smaller meatballs inside, and the tennis-ball bakso.

Around the soups, the street food of Jakarta: ketoprak and gado-gado under thick peanut sauce, batagor fish cakes, nasi goreng and mie goreng tek-tek, named for the sound of the vendor's wok. For a fuller meal there is beef rendang, goat satay, and soto Betawi, the creamy beef soup of old Batavia.