More Seats, More Dishes at Indonesian Restaurant Kenangan’s Second CBD Location
Words by Haymun Win · Published on 29 Sep 2026
The communal table at Elizabeth Street corner shop Kenangan is a haven for those craving Indonesian comfort food. Headed by three siblings and their partners, the restaurant has been cooking dishes from the owners’ home towns of Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Bali since 2023.
But for all its intimate charm, the Queen Vic shopfront couldn’t handle a real crowd. Enter Kenangan’s Little Bourke Street location, which opened in June. The 64-seater, just around the corner from nasi padang giant Sederhana, specialises in makan tengah (“family-style dining” in Bahasa). The original site has been renamed Kenangan Kecil (Little Kenangan) and sells takeaway rice boxes during lunch service for less than $18.
The new space is modelled after the siblings’ grandparents’ home, with terracotta tiles, ornate ceramic floors and a vaulted rattan roof. An illustration of a kid playing with a paper plane hangs on a signboard over the entrance. “[It] symbolises the inner child,” says co-owner Giovanni Sutjiutama. “As a kid, all you need to worry about is the food on the table. We want to bring that feeling back.”
Inside, expect a supersized array of fried, grilled and braised meats, alongside soups, curries and vegetable dishes.
Grilled saté is as good a starting point as any, with five regional options including a Balinese take with sweet sambal kecap. The risoles– the kind you get in Indonesian school canteens – are another standout snack. They’re stuffed with a mixture of chicken ragu, potatoes and carrots slow-cooked in bechamel.
Five spice pastes, or bumbu, underpin the menu, but don’t expect similar flavours across the board. “Indonesian bumbu aren’t rigid recipes,” says co-owner Grace Liu. “They cross, overlap and build upon one another.”
The yellow bumbu kuning is an earthy meat marinade with red onion, garlic, candlenuts, coriander seeds and galangal. But for Kenangan’s ayam goreng kalasan (a coconut-braised, lightly fried chicken dish from Yogyakarta, a region known for its sweeter cuisine), the base is rounded out with palm sugar and coconut.
Bumbu kuning is part of the trinity of “mother spice pastes”, Grace says. The white shallot-and-garlic-loaded bumbu putih forms the base for Kenangan’s quartet of soups, while the fiery-red bumbu merah starts the slow-braised beef rendang and all the spicy dishes (they’re given a dedicated section on the menu).
Outside the trinity, there’s also bumbu bakar, a caramelised soy marinade for the grilled meats. It’s central to the bestselling iga bakar kecap, a holdover from the Elizabeth Street original that sees Angus prime beef ribs braised for eight hours before they hit the grill. The marinade also stars in a grilled fish dish inspired by the seafood restaurants on Bali’s Jimbaran Bay.
Finally, Kenangan’s few dishes for the spice-averse are anchored by peanut sauces made frombumbu kachang. Tofu salads are tossed in creamy gado gado, while the lighter pecel sauce makes its way into a mixed rice lunch special featuring a protein pick, seasonal greens and house-made rice flour crackers.
Pastry chef and co-owner Hana Mahatmayanti, who staged at Paris’s Michelin-starred La Scene, puts her own spin on traditional Indonesian desserts. Es puter, a coconut milk ice-cream, comes in scoops or loaded with fermented cassava, black glutinous rice, brioche cubes and tapioca pearls. Her roti bakar is a buttery toasted brioche with chocolate sprinkles, hazelnut and cheddar cheese.
Hours:
Mon to Sat 11.30am–2.30pm,5pm–8.30pm
Sun 11.30am–2.30pm
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