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

The announcement arrived on Monday: Next a lot less than a calendar year in service, Redwood Town Indonesian restaurant Warung Siska would shut immediately. It was a rough blow to the nearby Indonesian meals neighborhood, primarily following Warung Siska managed to gain a point out in the esteemed Michelin Manual in its transient timespan. But Siska Silitonga, who was a chef husband or wife in the Redwood City cafe but parted means in January to pursue other ventures, suggests she’s established to guarantee the closure will not be the finish of the Bay Area’s Indonesian food items motion.

Due to the fact leaving Warung Siska, Silitonga has been concentrated on a quantity of forthcoming assignments. She’s in talks with a couple of investors for a new restaurant in San Francisco, which she envisions as a way to both feed and uplift the Bay Place Indonesian neighborhood. Her initial eyesight for Warung Siska was for it to be a space for Indonesians to take in, but also celebrate Indonesian culture between the designs that under no circumstances created it to gentle was to make a community house of kinds. She hoped the venue could host Indonesian musicians and language lessons, and be a house for Indonesian pop-up suppliers to serve foods and study how to run a cafe on Warung Siska’s off days, Silitonga states.

Aron Pruiett

Although these plans hardly ever arrived into fruition, Siska nevertheless wishes to build that dream restaurant. “The reiteration of regardless of what my subsequent restaurant is heading to be, now I can laser concentrate on that neighborhood facet — and there is no negotiation, it has to be that way,” Silitonga says. “I believe in it, I know folks will come. I want to cook my foods, allow me place what I want to set in it … No censorship of menu, no censorship of flavors.” She’s hunting into how she can help her potential employees and treat them effectively. Mentioning her admiration of chef Reem Assil’s development in a employee-owned cafe product, Silitonga claims she hopes to create an equitable pay product after she gets shifting on the new restaurant.

Nothing at all is finalized nonetheless, even so, so in the meantime Silitonga is busy with some impending functions and pop-ups. Very first is a night time with Fantastic in the Area on June 15, an al fresco supper series that pairs a chef with a farm and diners consume at a lengthy communal table in an outside location. Silitonga will also resume her pop-ups soon after that, mentioning a likely partnership with Mission Bowling Club this summer months, even though also continuing to offer her sambal sauce by way of Superior Eggs. And if trying to open a different cafe wasn’t ample, she’s also wanting to create an Indonesian cookbook Silitonga paired up with a writer to aid shop the notion all-around to publishers. “This is an enjoyable job mainly because we require far more Indonesian cookbooks out there,” Silitonga says. “The cookbook is something exactly where you can use area ingredients and does not need a journey to the Asian current market, anything you can just do at property and is simple to use, effortless to prepare dinner.” The e-book will also be part memoir, Silitonga adds, next her journey as a pop-up chef together with the recipes.

As far as the now-shut restaurant goes, Silitonga remembers the Indonesians who came from all about the Bay Region to Warung Siska to eat her food stuff and give her a hug, some even sporting batik, the common outfits from her house place. “We want a place to stand for individuals like this, in which a grandma can occur and wear her best batik, and make it welcoming for the grandmas and the small children,” Silitonga suggests. Warung Siska closing doesn’t have to be a unhappy function, she provides. “It didn’t perform out this time, but there is gonna be an additional one.”