Since opening in October 2025 on Jl. Opak No. 36 in Surabaya’s Darmo neighbourhood, ARPO has operated by reservation only — and has been fully booked most nights since. The restaurant is Arnold Poernomo’s, the chef and MasterChef Indonesia judge who built Mangkokku, Bebini Gelati, and Laci alongside his brothers. But ARPO is a different kind of project, and Arnold is deliberate about saying so. “Here I am 100% hands-on,” he said. “I am able to fully express my point of view about food — how I want my customers to be served, and how I want the experience to feel.”
Arnold grew up in Surabaya, moved to Sydney with his family, and learned to cook not through formal training but through the kitchens he worked in — starting as a dishwasher, moving through the hierarchy, absorbing technique and culture along the way before returning to Indonesia. That background is what ARPO tastes like. The concept is modern Asian, the format intimate, and the menu kept deliberately short.
“My upbringing has been very multicultural, which means a lot of different tastes come through in this place,” he said. “It is different, yet somehow familiar.”
The cooking philosophy behind the menu is worth sitting with. Arnold describes his approach in recent years as having become more stripped back — not simpler in the kitchen, but less performative on the plate.
“Even though what we serve can be described as comfort food, there is a great deal of thought, soul, and technique in every dish, every component, and every flavor,” he said. “It is presented simply, but the quality and care are very much there.” This is a useful distinction. The food at ARPO is not casual because it lacks ambition. It is casual because the ambition is pointed at something other than impressing the diner.
Two dishes make this argument most clearly. The chili crab is a recipe passed down from Arnold’s grandmother — not a replication of a regional classic, but something that carries her signature through his own hand.
“Every bowl should carry that warmth and comfort of going back home,” he said. Then there is the barramundi: butterflied, dried for several days before service, and — crucially — never planned. It arrived during the trial period by accident and stayed because it worked. Arnold describes it with a kind of affection reserved for things that cannot quite be explained. The pomelo salad is the third dish he points first-time guests toward, quieter than the other two but no less considered.
The choice to open in Surabaya rather than Jakarta or Bali is not incidental. Arnold reads his home city plainly. “Surabaya diners tend to appreciate bold, punchy flavors and straightforward food,” he said. “Comfort food wins here.”
Arnold describes the dining scene as one still finding itself — good talent emerging, concepts becoming more serious — and places ARPO somewhere casual and grounded within it. The experience he is building is perhaps best summarised in what he wants guests to leave with. “I want them to feel as though they have dined at a friend’s house or a family home,” he said. “The food should feel enjoyable, comforting, and honest.”
The meal ends with Liam Marthen. The pastry chef trained at Le Cordon Bleu Australia before an internship at Attica in Melbourne, where a sous chef reportedly shook his hand, declared his hands cold, and told him pastry was his calling. Liam describes his style as “whimsical but refined” — desserts that read as composed and polished but hold unexpected textures and flavours underneath. “I love desserts that look delicate and polished, but then have unexpected flavours, textures, or playful elements hidden inside,” he said. “A little bit mysterious. A little bit dramatic.”
His reference points span well beyond the kitchen — Alice in Wonderland, Fine Arts, film, fashion, and a creative process that involves prayer before the work begins. What he is trying to build at ARPO is a dessert section that functions as a conclusion rather than an afterthought.
“Pastry is the final impression people leave with,” he said. “I want desserts to feel like the perfect ending to the story — something polished and exciting, but still comforting at the same time.” He wants guests to leave feeling, as he puts it, a “soft reset.”
Between Arnold’s grandmother’s chili crab and Liam’s description of himself as an entremet — “polished externally, but internally it’s just whimsy, overthinking, and creative madness held together with gelatine” — ARPO lands somewhere honest. It is a restaurant that knows what it wants to be, and has found two people to make it that way.
ARPO Restaurant
Jl. Opak No. 36, Darmo, Surabaya
