Meetbowl

When I yearn for something comforting, the thought of going to going to Meetbowl is never faraway. Meetbowl serves up what I would like to call Indonesian "street-food", simple, delicious food you find in the streets of Jakarta. Abang-abang with cleverly designed gerobaks (push-carts) sell their daily baksos and bakwans to discerning public.

While Meetbowl is not able to create the atmosphere that street vendors do in Jakarta, they are close enough in terms of flavours.

The decor at Meetbowl is really basic, clumsily arranged table and chairs litter this little eatery. The menu is not big, I would say about 20 or so items, mostly noodle or noodle soup based. Meetbowl is a self-service eatery, so you order your food at the counter, and it will be brought over to the table of your liking.

Bakwan Special ($8.00)

This dish is really comforting to me, this was what I used to eat when I much younger, photographic memories of street vendors scooping out delicious Meatball from the piping hot of the stock pot, really magical.

The version at Meetbowl goes like this: Indonesian style meatballs (way too salty though), stuffed tofu and deep fried wonton are served on a clear broth, you can choose either one type of noodles or two types of noodles ( I usually go for both: egg noodles plus the rice noodles)

As noted the meatball is really salty, apart from that, the deep-fried stuffs are fried to crisp perfection.

Bakso special ($8)

This is pretty similar to the bakwan special, apart from it having more variety of meatballs, one to note would be bakso urat or if you are lucky bakso stuffed with quail egg. You can also choose to either have egg or rice noodles to accompany it.

Rule of thumb: It is norm to put decorate the bakso and bakwan special noodles with condiments. What I'll do is add a tiny spoonful of the Sambal (very spicy), good dollop of the chiili sauce, good squeeze of the kecap manis and a good sprinkle of fried shallots. You may of course adjust the quantity of the condiments to suit your taste. (i.e. sweet: more kecap manis, spicy: more sambal, etc.)

Meetbowl
95 York Street
South Melbourne VIC 3205
Ph: (03) 9696 4412

Food: $7-$10

Open Seven days
11:30am-9pm

Score: 3/5