This Jakarta restaurant rediscovers contemporary cuisine through a Chinese-Indonesian and Korean lens

Most culinary school graduates have a burning desire to start their own restaurants. Not Rachel Tjahja, the executive chef-co-owner of Su Ma, a progressive restaurant in Jakarta, which opened in August 2023.

The 29-year-old, who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu Sydney, recalls: “Running a restaurant was too much and hospitality was not for me then.” She detoured to work at her father’s recruitment company before her passion for cooking returned. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Rachel ran a food takeaway business on Instagram, cooking comforting dishes such as lidah cabe ijo (beef tongue with green chilli) and Baileys tiramisu for friends and family. “It exploded from there,” she recalls.

A friend requested a “bougie dinner”, which spun into a thriving private dining business. When the opportunity to helm Su Ma came, she took it as a chance to bring her style of food to a broader audience, alongside her South Korean culinary schoolmate, Ryan Kim, who is the pastry chef.  

Today, Su Ma is one of Jakarta’s most forward-looking restaurants, revolving around the shared Eastern Asian heritage of its chefs. Su Ma, which is in a sleek building in the trendy Blok M neighbourhood, is a moreish mosaic of her Japanese-French cooking background and influences from their heritage.

“We bring a fresh approach to familiar dishes, in a way that inspires memories and new flavours,” she shares. 

Helming Su Ma has been a journey of rediscovering Chinese cuisine through the lens of a Chinese-Indonesian for Rachel, who was born to a Hakka-Chinese family from West Kalimantan. 

She reflects: “I am amazed at how beautifully rich and diverse Chinese cuisine is.” Her fascination with the regional Chinese cuisines deepened after a trip to Shanghai earlier this year, where she was inspired by how restaurants spotlight underappreciated ingredients.  

Avant-garde marriage

Rachel and Ryan liken the current fifth volume of Su Ma’s menu to a bridge. They say: “It connects the past and present, memory and movement, tradition and transformation. Each dish carries subtle traces of people, places, and moments that have shaped our craft and continue to guide our future.”  

The signature dish is her interpretation of beef wellington. Her version incorporates preserved Chinese sausage, mustard greens, and rice and is paired with smoky lapsang souchong to cut through the richness of the wagyu. 

Another dish, Dou, is a reimagination of ikan tahu tausi (fried fish with black beans and tofu), an Indonesian-Chinese celebratory dish. The delicate toothfish sits on crispy tofu, black bean and olive tapenade, and pickled papaya dongchimi in a pool of sesame shochu sauce. 

For desserts, Ryan presents Buckwheat with the grain-based ice cream and meringue with yuzu gel. He also interprets Black Forest, with buah keluak (Indonesian black nut), instead of chocolate. 

Rachel believes that Jakarta is ready for a refined culinary evolution. “The fine-dining scene here is still very young, but it offers quite a lot,” she notes, pointing to the cuisines of other restaurants such as August and Jinjoo, a contemporary Korean restaurant.

“Jakarta is super diverse — it’s a melting pot of many cultures. The scene is growing, and we can push even more.”

This is the third of a three-part special series on Jakarta’s fine-dining scene.