The food comes out wrapped in a banana leaf, folded shut, hot enough that you feel it through your fingers when you pick it up. Nobody opens it for you.
Peel it back and you catch a face full of steam. Coconut, chili, and something green underneath that you won’t be able to place.
That’s nasi bungkus. If you eat one good new thing this month, make it this.
Here’s what’s under the leaf. Jasmine rice that’s been pressed up against everything else long enough to taste like all of it. Half a hard-boiled egg. Fried chicken. Young jackfruit stewed until it turns silky and a little sweet, which sounds odd and is the part you’ll be thinking about on the drive home. Cassava leaves, dark and mineral, like nothing else you eat in this town. A green chili. A spoonful of red chili sambal. And beef rendang, cooked so far down that the coconut milk has disappeared into the meat and left it dark and shaggy at the edges.
Eight things, one leaf. In Indonesia people eat this standing next to a cart for pocket change, which is what happens when a whole country spends a few hundred years getting street food right.
You eat it by dragging a bit of everything into the rice and taking a mixed bite. The rendang does the heavy lifting. The jackfruit cools it off. The sambal shows up a second late and hangs around.
About that sambal. There’s a heat scale here and it wasn’t built for us. Medium is what a Texan would call hot. The Indonesian setting is a commitment. Ask them, they’ll tell you straight.
Bali Street Cafe is at 2515 Inwood Rd., Suite 119, a small family-run room in the Medical District, and as best anyone can tell it’s the only Indonesian restaurant in Dallas. Nobody’s stepped up to argue the point.
You’ll want to come back, so here’s what’s waiting.
The rendang by itself is the bestseller and it earns that. The ayam kalasan is fried chicken done a way nobody around here does it. They simmer the bird in coconut water with aromatics first, so it’s seasoned all the way through, then fry it with breadcrumbs scattered on instead of a batter. The crust comes out light and broken up and crackling in spots. People drive in from other cities for it.
Soto ayam is turmeric chicken soup, gold and clean, the bowl you want when you’re sick or wrung out. Gado-gado is cucumber, potato, greens, egg, tofu and tempeh under a house peanut sauce, served cool, and it flips people who walked in skeptical. Empek-empek is fried fish cake over noodles with tamarind sauce, and it’ll put out whatever fire you started with the sambal.
When you’re ready to go further: rawon, a beef stew that runs nearly black from keluak nut, with no equivalent anywhere in North Texas. Ayam geprek, fried chicken smashed into sambal, which the menu warns you about in capital letters. Bebek goreng, fried duck. Bakso, the meatball noodle soup Indonesians eat when they need comfort. Sate ayam, grilled chicken skewers with peanut sauce on top or on the side, however you want it.
A couple of dishes carry history in them. The risoles are creamy chicken egg rolls in a breadcrumb shell, a shape the Dutch left behind. And the rendang gets folded into pastry pockets the menu calls empanadas so Dallas will order them, though the Dutch had their own word for it. Three hundred and fifty years of colonial history in a fried snack that runs less than a beer.
Before you go: they’re closed Mondays, and Wednesday is lunch only, eleven to three. Tuesday through Saturday it’s midday to nine. Sunday depends on which listing you believe, so call. That’ a lot to remember, so jot it down.
Two dishes feed three people. There’s a small card surcharge. Vegetarians do fine here and most of the menu has a gluten-free version. Get the nasi bungkus. Take medium the first time no matter what your pride says. And don’t let anybody else open it.
