What’s Next For The Indonesian Chef Behind Now-Closed Warung Siska in Redwood City

The announcement came on Monday: Next considerably less than a calendar year in service, Redwood Metropolis Indonesian cafe Warung Siska would near instantly. It was a tricky blow to the area Indonesian foodstuff neighborhood, in particular following Warung Siska managed to gain a mention in the esteemed Michelin Guide in its brief timespan. But Siska Silitonga, who was a chef lover in the Redwood Metropolis restaurant but parted methods in January to go after other ventures, suggests she’s decided to guarantee the closure will not be the finish of the Bay Area’s Indonesian food stuff movement.

Considering the fact that leaving Warung Siska, Silitonga has been centered on a selection of upcoming tasks. She’s in talks with a couple buyers for a new cafe in San Francisco, which she envisions as a way to the two feed and uplift the Bay Spot Indonesian local community. Her first eyesight for Warung Siska was for it to be a room for Indonesians to try to eat, but also rejoice Indonesian tradition among the ideas that hardly ever produced it to mild was to develop a community space of kinds. She hoped the location could host Indonesian musicians and language classes, and be a house for Indonesian pop-up vendors to provide food stuff and find out how to operate a cafe on Warung Siska’s off days, Silitonga claims.

While all those ideas in no way arrived into fruition, Siska even now needs to make that dream cafe. “The reiteration of whichever my following restaurant is heading to be, now I can laser concentrate on that local community element — and there is no negotiation, it has to be that way,” Silitonga states. “I consider in it, I know folks will arrive. I want to cook my food stuff, let me set what I want to place in it … No censorship of menu, no censorship of flavors.” She’s wanting into how she can assistance her long run employees and treat them effectively. Mentioning her admiration of chef Reem Assil’s progress in a employee-owned restaurant design, Silitonga suggests she hopes to create an equitable shell out model once she will get transferring on the new restaurant.

Almost nothing is finalized nevertheless, having said that, so in the meantime Silitonga is fast paced with some upcoming situations and pop-ups. Very first is a evening with Remarkable in the Industry on June 15, an al fresco supper series that pairs a chef with a farm and diners take in at a extensive communal desk in an outside location. Silitonga will also resume her pop-ups following that, mentioning a prospective partnership with Mission Bowling Club this summertime, though also continuing to offer her sambal sauce by means of Good Eggs. And if trying to open yet another restaurant wasn’t more than enough, she’s also looking to publish an Indonesian cookbook Silitonga paired up with a author to enable shop the strategy all around to publishers. “This is an fascinating task due to the fact we have to have additional Indonesian cookbooks out there,” Silitonga claims. “The cookbook is one thing in which you can use regional ingredients and doesn’t have to have a excursion to the Asian market place, some thing you can just do at home and is uncomplicated to use, simple to cook.” The ebook will also be section memoir, Silitonga adds, subsequent her journey as a pop-up chef alongside the recipes.

As considerably as the now-shut cafe goes, Silitonga remembers the Indonesians who arrived from all around the Bay Region to Warung Siska to consume her food items and give her a hug, some even donning batik, the regular dresses from her house place. “We have to have a area to characterize people like this, wherever a grandma can arrive and wear her finest batik, and make it welcoming for the grandmas and the small children,” Silitonga suggests. Warung Siska closing does not have to be a unfortunate event, she provides. “It didn’t do the job out this time, but there is gonna be another one particular.”