On one beautiful Saturday morning, my high-school-besties, Janet, and I, found ourselves storing our cabin-size luggage in the compartment inside train in Surabaya Gubeng Train Station. It's #GirlsWeekendGetaway time!
After episodes of making and cancelling plans, we were finally able to free up our schedule to go on weekend getaway together! Our destination was a favored 2 hours away sweet escape destination from Surabaya, the one and only Malang city❣️ Throughout the journey on train, Janet and I were busy discussing on what to eat and where to go in Malang. After googling for places and culinary recommendations, we made sure we go for the famous noodles, meatballs and cafés, and visit the newly opened Jawa Timur Park 3 (Jatim Park 3) during our 2D1N trip.
In this post, I will share the food stops that we made during the trip. The visit to Jatim Park 3 will be in another separate post. Please anticipate for it since it will be loaded with tons of pictures! *brb selecting pics 🏃🏻♀️🏃🏻♀️
When the train gradually slowed down and finally stopped, we know we have arrived in Malang and ready for the first mission: feed the growling tummy!
Depot Mie Sawahan.
📍Yulius Usman 15 B-C, Malang
Mie or noodle in Indonesia is quite different compared to another country's: it served dried with the soup served separately. Usually it starts with base seasonings of soy sauce, oil, and other condiments; mixed with the thick chewy noodles, topped with finely diced chicken meat, and finished off with the fried scallion and spring onion. Almost every city in Indonesia sells noodle, but Malang city is one of the city that famous for noodle dishes and they called it cwie mie.
In Malang, there are many noodles-shop selling cwie-mie and proclaim their cwie mie as the legendary one. Janet and I were aiming for cwie mie from the famous Depot Gloria, but unfortunately it was closed for renovation. So, we directly turned the wheel to Depot Mie Sawahan which actually is a 'sister-restaurant' from Depot Gloria as the owners are siblings.
We ordered the chicken cwie mie (26k IDR) and half portion of fried dumpling (1 portion of 10 dumplings cost 37.5k IDR, but you can request for half portion). Since we were hungry and yes, the food were so delish, we devoured it all in a minute. For me, the cwie mie's texture was nice and the chicken topping was generous. The fried dumpling was also heavenly: crunchy batter, plentiful fillings. Yum!
Bakso Cak Gondhol.
📍 Sunandar Priyo Sudarmo No.31, Malang
Another Indonesia's most popular food is bakso (meatball). In Malang, you can easily find bakso everywhere (from the mobile food stall with motorcycle to fancy restaurant) with many different styles (make it to-go with plastic pouch, enjoy with meat-soup, or grill it on skewer). It is common for meatball sold in Indonesia to use beef as the meat. So when I heard Malang has meatball with pork, Janet stepped on the gas pedal and brought me to Bakso Cak Gondhol in Malang city.
Once we entered the small restaurant, on our left we will be welcomed with the food counter where we can choose what we want. There were 6 choices: fine grounded meatball, coarse grounded meatball, siomay a.k.a steamed meat dumpling, meat-stuffed tofu, fried meatball, and fried dumpling. Each piece of those items costs 3k IDR.
We both ordered the complete set with one piece of all items (18k IDR). I think the unique selling point for this bakso (aside from the pork meat used) was the soup. The soup was clearer than the usual bakso and the taste was light, so it balanced out the meaty taste from the bakso. Combined with the chopped spring onion, I savoured every spoon of my bakso and even ask for extra soup!
Pawvilion Dog Café.
📍Kesemek 4, Malang
📍Kesemek 4, Malang
This is probably the most hits cafe in Malang at the moment. They bring the popular concept in Japan to Indonesia: Experience dining surrounded by the four-legged friends! Sounds fun right?🐶 But first, let's talk about the food!
There is a minimum order requirement in this café: Order min. 1 main course on weekdays (at any price) or spend min. 30k IDR on weekends. If you only want to play with the dogs, the coupons are sold at 20k IDR. The menu selection was quite various; they offer snack, breakfast menu (pancake, omelette), pasta and rice, and ranges of beverages. We chose the mushroom olio di aglio (28k IDR) and breaded fish n' chips (43k IDR). Taste wise, it was so-so; just like how the common café's food should be 😉 but the portion was OK for the price. For the beverages, I pretty like the thick and sweet banana chocoshake (25k IDR) that we ordered.
Once you done eating / While you are eating, you can play with the dogs. From their Instagram account, it seems like there are around 9 dogs in the Pawvilion. However, when we visit there around 9:30 AM, we only met 5 dogs; the husky, corgi, golden retriever, cocker spaniel, and the beagle. Frankly speaking, I came to the cafe with high expectation to play with the doggo (since I don't pet any at home). However... I think (at least at that time) the dogs preferred to play with themselves. They either (1) run, jumped, and barked with each other, or (2) just sat and ignored us human😕 Soooo saaaad...
After few minutes failed to attract their attention to play with us, we didn't want to annoy them further. So we decided to just take 1 mandatory shot at their corner with the dogs (which actually required extra extra effort!😅thanks to the staff for the never ending snacks bribing to convince the dogs!) and leave the café with full tummy but empty heart.
Koono Gelato.
📍Bromo 19, Malang
For dessert, we opt for something sweet and cold, so we went to the newly opened Koono Gelato. They have the regular flavours (S: 18k, M: 22k IDR) and the premium flavours (S: 25k, M: 232k IDR). Since we were full at that time, we both ordered the small cup. I forget which flavor that I ordered, but the gelato was really nice. The texture was smooth and it wasn't too sweet. The downside for me was only the portion size. The small cup was uber small in my opinion. I think next time I will need to buy the medium one 😅
If your purpose is to find place to hang out, Koono can be a place to consider. They have indoor and outdoor area with cute interior and cozy ambience. Another plus point, huge parking space😉 Eating good food experience is not solely rely on the food right?
Alrihght, that's the end of my food journey for #GirlsWeekendGetaway in Malang! I think when I reached home and weighed my self, I gained 1-2 kgs of happy fat from devouring all the tasty food in Malang😂 Yet it didn't stop me to go back and revisit these places again, and also explore new culinary destinations!
Hope you get some useful information from this post to decide what to eat when you visit Malang. Meanwhile, I'll be posting the where to go in a bit. See you! xx
