Photo by Danielle Dahl
Comprised of thousands of islands, it’s no great surprise that Indonesia is home to many styles of food. Unlike Madison and Appleton, Milwaukee hasn’t had an Indonesian restaurant. As may be deduced from its name, the menu at Peking Chef (8673 N. Port Washington Road) isn’t fully Indonesian. Unlike the dishes influenced by Dutch colonization at Madison’s Indonesian restaurant or the Malaysian flavor in Appleton’s, Peking Chef’s offerings from the nation of islands draw some parallels to U.S. comfort foods. The pile of wide rice noodles of kweetiau goreng comes chocked with thin slices of beef, shrimp and little links of Chinese sausage tasting akin to a sweeter kielbasa. Rendang beef with potatoes arrives to the table like a stew with a curried gravy-like sauce that’s not heavy on spice. Though delicious entrées in generous portions were evident at a recent lunch visit, I personally thought that the food’s temperature could have been a little hotter. Peking Chef is definitely worth a return visit to try their iteration of the Indonesian vegetarian street dish, gado-gado, which need not be served all that hot.
