Pitstop Culinary Heaven, Mangga Besar

Hi Eaters.

Mangga Besar is quite a busy culinary area with lots of restaurants and street food vendors lining up in the side of the busy street. Mostly the food you can find here are commonly chinese food. It is well known to be a perfect place to get some delicious chinese cuisines. Nevertheless if you dig up more to even the smallest section of the road, you might find some surprises along the way, like one that I found yesterday, Pitstop Culinary Heaven.

Occupying the space which used to be a parking lot for a dentist's office, Pitstop transformed into a nice spacious somewhat food court area with quite a lot of food vendors offering light bites and snacks. It's an open space dining area that opens starting from 18.00. It's a nice place to get to hang out with friends since mostly teenagers occupied this food court last night. Finding it could be quite tricky since Mangga Besar has a lot of small alleys and roads. You must use your GPS to find this place. But to make it easier for you to find this place, let me inform you that the alley is next to a tax office.

Some light bites and snacks you can find in this place are quite common, such as toast bread, noodles, meatballs, and fried bananas. But to my surprise, I find sticky rice in many variants and also the hype sate taichan are also being sold here.

Sate Taichan - IDR 23K

This is a dish which is kinda booming lately. If the usual satay is grilled with the seasoning being gently rubbed, then the sate taichan is just grilled as it is without any other seasoning besides salt and maybe a bit of lemon. Don't expect to get peanut or soy sauce to accompany the dish, you will just get some chilli sauce instead. 
Pitstop's Sate Taichan was actually delicious. Being said that only seasoned with salt, it was pretty tasty. The chicken was moist and not dry, and it had a nice saltiness within its tender meat. 

Indomie Sambal Matah - IDR 18K

Indomie just can never go wrong. The fried Indomie was served with sambal matah and a fried egg. The sambal matah was nice and spicy. I do love the garlicky flavor it had. Indomie Goreng is undoubtable delicious, but I would like maybe some added topping besides just fried egg in this dish. Maybe some shredded chicken would be nice.

Pitstop Combo - IDR 28K

This sandwich is DA BOMB. Delicious af! I really love the generous fillings of smoked beef, mushrooms, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, and mozarella cheese. A must try!

Smores Toast - IDR 26K

The selections of sweet toast bread are also quite intriguing. The one that I tried was the Smores Toast. As you might have guessed, this toast is served with an abundant amount of marshmallow and accompanied with lots of chopped peanuts and chocolate sauce. I find the texture combination from the chewy marshmallow and the crunchy peanuts really nice though I would suggest they use graham crackers crumble better to replace the peanuts. The taste was pretty sweet, so if you're just a sweet-tooth then this one is perfect for you.

Bakso Yoke Komplit - IDR 25K

This one might not be considered as a light bite. The portion is fulfilling. In a bowl of this Bakso Komplit, you will get 5 meatballs, tofu, vermicelli, cow's veins and cracker. The broth was pretty nice, though I think it would be better if it tasted a bit more salty. It was way bit too sweet for me. I'm also not a big fan of vermicelli when it comes about meatballs, so I would suggest an opt for egg noodles besides the vermicelli. The meatballs, however, was delicious and it was springy too.

Shaokao from Mala Kitchen

Another interesting outlet to try in Pitstop is the Mala Kitchen. They specialized in serving shaokao, or Chinese barbecue. Some of their shaokao that I tried were lamb, enokitake, chives, baby corn, salmon ball, and crab stick. They range from IDR 5-6K per skewer.
I like how they perfectly grilled the shaokao, but the heavy intense of the chilli powder was a bit overwhelming, thus making the skewers pretty spicy. It's just my personal preference. If you like spicy food, then just go for it!

Sushiban Ovomaltine - IDR 25K

The word Sushiban is an abbreviation from sushi banana. Yup, it's a plate of grilled banana, served sushi-roll-shaped with corn flakes and sweet milk topping. I must say this one is pretty unique and flavorful. I always like grilled banana and this one was not a disappointment. The banana itself was not too sweet so when combined with the milk, the sweetness was not overwhelming. However, I would prefer that the corn flakes to be replaced with rice cracker. It got pretty soggy if you're taking your time eating it.

Mango Sticky Rice - IDR 18K & Ketan Susu Saus Durian - IDR 16K

Some desserts worth trying are these variants of sticky rice. Remembering I'm gonna take a trip to Thailand in the next few days, it was so nice to take a head start and enjoying some of well-known Thai desserts at Pitstop. For both dishes I must say that the sticky rice used were pretty good. I loved that nice hint of saltiness from the coconut milk. The mango fruit however was a bit too small. I'm hoping for a big slice of mouthwatering mango fruit on top of that delicious sticky rice. The durian was excellent in my opinion.

Thai Tea - IDR 15K

A nice glass of Thai tea. I like how it's not too milky and yet had a strong distinctive taste of tea. It's pretty similar with the Thai tea from a well-known Thai tea food stalls which now you can find in many shopping malls.

Alpukat Juice - IDR 23K

I loved this to the max. It's not watery but so thick and creamy, the kind of way I love my avocado juice would be. It's also not too milky so the flavor and the aroma of the avocado were so evident, and I must say that I really love how they give a generous amount of chocolate milk inside the glass.

Overall conclusion, this is one hidden gem in the vicinity of Mangga Besar. There are just lots of delicious options to choose. I would definitely put this on my bucket list if ever I should visit the area of Mangga Besar again. Best of luck to you, Pitstop. Keep on serving delicious food!

Keep on chewing!

Jazzy Dee

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Pitstop Culinary Heaven
Jl. Mangga Besar IV No. 2A (next to Kantor Pajak)

Ph: 081229661100

Mangga Besar, Jakarta Barat
Opening hours: 18.00-02.00