Magna Jakarta

Outstanding and out of the way, Sky Café brings Indonesian flavor to Cannoli Alley.

by Adam Erace

Neal Santos THE BROTHMAN PROPHECIES: Sky Café chef Lily Tjia does such amazing things with soup — this particular one combines rice noodles, fish balls, fried tofu and more in a fiery curry broth — that you'll crave a hot bowl even if it's sweltering outside.

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On the west side of Ritner Street in deep South Philly, all the businesses end in vowels. Primo's. Cacia's. Potito's. Cannuli's. Then there's Sky Café on the southeast corner of 16th Street, an enigma behind dark brick and drawn blinds. Were it not for the telltale sign swinging above the stoop, you'd never know this building contained a restaurant, let alone an Indonesian one.

There's an "open" sign hanging in the door, but it looks so dark inside, it has to be a mistake, as if the owners went all '84 Baltimore Colts, neglecting to flip it to "closed" in the haste of their furtive midnight departure. I almost expect the door to be locked, but, surprise, it turns easily, depositing me in a clean, cheery room of yellow walls and navy rugs. It's filled with Indonesians who are as surprised to see me and I am to see them.

"We don't get many Americans," explains co-owner Betty Yu in elegantly accented English as the flat screen above her shows Jennifer's Body on cable, a dinner-appropriate flick as bloody as the jars of chili sauce on each lacquered table. "Did the guy who was here Friday tell you about us?"

We whiteys do all know each other, but I'd actually found out about Sky Café back when Nido, the trattoria that used to live here, closed and Sky's sign went up in January. A Google search produced their Facebook page, covered in comments in Indonesian — an encouraging sign bolstered over three visits, each better than the next, each featuring me and a bunch of Indonesians communing over long, luxurious soups prepared by Yu's mother, Lily Tjia. Sky Café may be fortified to keep outsiders out, but once you're in, you might as well be family.

And it's definitely a family affair here, with Yu and her brother, Eddy Susanto, waiting tables; her husband, Anthony Lys, stocking the kitchen; and Tjia doing all the cooking. The family moved from Jakarta, where they owned a restaurant, to New York in 2002, then to Philly last year.

Tjia is from the Sumatran city of Medan (Indonesia's fourth-largest), and so is her more-spicy-than-sweet cooking. This is Sky Café, not Sky Satay, and the menu is divided equally among noodle and rice dishes, with a handful of starters on the back page. You should begin there, preferably with the house salad featuring sliced cukes, crushed peanuts, steamed bean sprouts and fantastically crispy fried tofu playing hide and seek in layers of chopped iceberg lettuce. Blanketed in a ferociously spicy peanut dressing, it's undeniably the most thrilling house salad you'll ever eat.

On another visit, I began with whole chicken wings, marinated in soy and garlic, floured and fried to order. Squirting them with zigzags of sriracha and kecap manis (sweet Indonesian soy sauce) didn't diminish their audible crunchiness; you could hear me tearing in over the '80s soundtrack of A-ha and the Bangles. Fried wontons filled with ground chili- and garlic-spiced chicken (rather than pork, to accommodate the halal-observant) delivered the same crunch — even after half an hour in a steamy Styrofoam clamshell. The takeout travel didn't topple their pope-hat peaks, didn't dampen their crackly shells. They're some of the best fried dumplings I've had.

There's startling complexity in this simple food. Tjia makes me crave soup in August. You'll feel the same way once you taste her Medan coconut chicken soup, a lime-toned whirlpool filled with chopped fried chicken, white rice and supple potato "pastries." Simmered with lemongrass, nutmeg and galangal, the coconut-milk-enriched chicken broth shimmered, alight with droplets of golden fat that gave the soup a soulfulness and coats your lips like Burt's Bees. The curry rice noodle soup was spicier — credit the hearty spoonful of red curry paste — but it, too, was creamed with coconut, a refreshing accent for rice noodles, tender fish balls, marshmallow-y fried tofu, a fried whole hard-boiled egg and diaphanous tofu skin floating in the fire-breathing broth. A tastier flotsam and jetsam.

Mie Medan, the region's traditional tagliatelle-like egg noodles, starred in a third soup, this one representing Indonesia's ethnic Chinese population with sliced marinated-and-grilled pork loin and bok choy in clear-as-consommé chicken broth. The same house-made mie also came stir-fried in a soy sauce-sesame oil slick with little shrimp, squeaky fish balls and coins of gingered pork sausage. Yu calls it Sky's version of lo mein, but that doesn't really do it justice. Soft and chewy, the wavy noodles are good as any fresh pasta in town.

The mie dishes were part of a takeaway order that was filled in a brisk 20 minutes. Not that I was in a rush, with a frosty coconut water and a blood-spattered cannibals-in-the-forest flick to entertain me. Yu remembered me when I showed up to place the order. "Very spicy, right," she said, more of a statement than a question when I ordered the slabs of intoxicating beef rendang mounded over coconut rice with fried dried anchovies, brittle as amber glass; another whole fried egg doused in crushed chili sauce; and Medan-style quick pickles of cucumber and carrot. She either has a great memory or they really don't get many Americans here.

Considering the prices, foodie allure and soon-to-premiere delivery service, that's about to change. I don't think the Indonesian clientele will mind. I remember an encounter with one dude on my first visit to Sky Café. He was sitting next to me with his wife and their baby girl and when they got up to leave, he stood over my table and asked me, gently, if I enjoyed his country's food.

"Erts sfkj aofaas durp," I replied through a mouthful of Tjia's mesmerizing Medan soup, nodding as vigorously as a Charlie Manuel bobblehead. And the dude beamed. And he thanked me. Thanked me, like I'd just commented how beautiful his child was. (It should be noted that she was, in fact, adorable, all big brown eyes beneath jet-black bob.) He seemed so pleased, so proud, as if he were personally responsible for a cuisine shaped many, many generations before his.

That's patriotism right there, folks. The kind you can taste.

(adam.erace@citypaper.net)