bundo raya: padang indonesian food, prahran

My parents have been visiting Australia very, very frequently in recent years. So much so, in fact, that they're now the ones introducing me to places to eat. Bundo Raya, a modest and friendly little family-run Indonesian restaurant which serves up tasty regional Padang food, (9/176 Commercial Rd, Prahran) is one of those places.

sambal chicken.

We've been there for lunch a few times now, and we always order from the daily bain marie offerings. At the moment, $10 gets you a plate of rice with two meaty selections and one vegetable dish. They also have a set menu where you can order nasi goreng, mie goreng, bakso padang, sate padang, and soto padang, just to mention a few. So far, we've only tried the gado-gado from that menu, or maybe it was the ketoprak, but we weren't a fan - the sweet and salty peanut sauce, for us, lacked richness and complexity, and the crackers on top were alarmingly pink. We're definitely still keen on trying the other menu items, though!

this was either gado gado, or ketoprak.

Meanwhile, the bain marie items have yet to fail us. The home-style methods do occasionally cause a little inconsistency - for example, the curry chicken, which we frequently order, has ranged, at times, from being slightly oversalted to exuding absolute perfection in a glorious harmony of spices. But overall, we've always enjoyed our meals and found them to be great value.

Here's a little snapshot of what we've had this year... P.S. I'm not tremendously familiar with Indonesian food, and the bain marie items are not labelled, so I've given them my very simple best guesses. If anyone knows the correct or traditional names of the dishes featured here, please do let me know!

Curry chicken. Green beans with tempeh (a traditional fermented soy product).

lovely curry chicken, and green beans with tempeh.

Fried fish with sambal.

sambal fried fish.

Sambal chicken. Curried kale.

Another type of sambal chicken, and some sort of kale curry.

Beef tendon curry.

tender, chewy beef tendons in curry sauce.

Oh, and for some extra heat, don't forget to help yourself to their deliciously spicy sambal ijo / sambal lado mudo, a green chilli sambal popular in Padang cuisine, on the side of the counter. That's the good stuff, right there.

scrumptious padang-style green sambal.

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