Recently, Indonesian social media has just been buzzed by the presence of a unique ice cream flavor of a very famous fried instant noodle brand. Though the combination is unheard of before–and frankly raised my eyebrow at first–the combination of sweet and salty in food isn’t news.
The combination has been a classic tale for decades; even the popularity is backed up by scientific research. But as technology keeps pushing innovation and creativity hence becoming wilder, people are finding more and more ways to combine the two worlds into one tantalizing mouthful, creating the new term “swalty” as the growing food trend.
The combination is particularly fascinating with dessert. After all, look at how big of a difference the Maldon salt flakes made to your chocolate chip cookies or how dipping salty fast-food french fries into vanilla ice cream has become the unspoken custom for most people. By the book, it shouldn’t work, yet it does wonderfully, and here’s why I think they do:
Why Swalty Desserts Work
Balance
Although salt and sugar are opposite taste spectrums, combining them in the right proportions creates a balance. Even when you’re making a generally sweet dessert, like cakes or brownies, salt is still the essential secret pinch that will prevent the dessert from being too cloyingly sweet. In fact, it is scientifically proven that our body recognizes flavors (including sweet!) more deeply when salt is present. For example, a pinch of salt to a chocolate-based dessert will not only tone down the sweetness but actually help enhance the cocoa flavor, making it a more profound and flavorful bite rather than a death by sugar.
It Doesn’t Get Boring
Have you ever eaten so much food that your stomach is about to burst, but when the waitress brings out the dessert, there’s suddenly extra room inside? Dessert by itself offers comfort, and the swalty element adds excitement to the mix. Even if something is delicious, the same bite over and over again will still eventually get you bored. However, with rich and juxtaposing flavor profiles on one plate, the different flavors will hit various notes of your taste bud and keep your appetite stimulated. With it, scooping for another bite, even when you’re physically full, is not such a hard task anymore.
Flavor Layering
In a perfect dessert, each component should have a specific place and purpose; some may be prominent, while others play a more peripheral role, such as adding depth, brightness, or richness to the dish. Aromatic ingredients such as lemongrass and ginger, for example, worked well with a delicate flavor like vanilla because of vanilla’s ability to wonderfully mellows out the sharpness while adding a whiff of depth to the dish, making it more rounded and complex. Layering flavors, ultimately, transform the dessert from a one-dimensional (sweet) experience to a more complex and satisfying one.
Best Swalty Dessert in Jakarta
If you are the type of person who enjoys a mound of mixed popcorn at the cinema or is guilty of sprinkling sea salt in your hot chocolate, good news! Nowadays, there are a lot of strange-sounding yet delicious swalty concoctions out there available for you to explore. Below are some of our top picks that can be found in Jakarta:
Honey Butter Potato Chips Ice Cream from JOWA
The Barito-based modern Korean fusion restaurant, JOWA, has rapidly gained popularity among culinary enthusiasts in Jakarta. Though the core of their cuisine is Korean, JOWA’s menu presents its own spin on well-known favorite dishes. Their must-try dessert, ‘Honey Butter Potato Chips Ice Cream,’ for example, pays homage to the classic odd pairing of french fries and ice cream, allowing diners to enjoy a unique and delicious sensory experience. After all, it’s hard to beat the comfort of scooping ice cream with potato chips at the end of a meal.
Foie PB&J from August
If the recently awarded restaurant, August, is known for one dish, it’s undoubtedly the iconic Foie PB&J. Inspired by the chef’s favored lunchtime meal, this peanut and butter jelly ‘sandwich’ isn’t anything like the one you’d find tucked inside a plastic pouch on a supermarket shelf–yet the nostalgic appeal remains. The dish uses crisp toast as a base, then layered with foie mousse, which smooth buttery texture contrasts the peanuts beautifully, and umami-ness perfectly complements the sweet pickled grapes. With sweetness, salinity, fat, and a tinge of acidity on a plate, the dish cleverly blurs the lines between savory and dessert—making it a triumphant homage to everyone’s favorite good ol’ PB&J.
The Chelsea cookie from Gotham Treats
Among the New York-style cookie craze that has been happening in Jakarta, Gotham Treats might be one of the South’s most beloved ones, serving swirls of soft-serve, decadent custard pudding and massive chunks of moist baked cookies. In the sea of sweet offerings, The Chelsea, a miso and white chocolate chip cookie, notably stands out for its great balance of sweet and savory. The soft cookies are sinfully rich, yet with the saltiness of miso, blend into a satisfying bite that doesn’t shock the tastebud with overload sweetness. If you’ve grown tired of the same classic chocolate chip cookie and want to venture out to a slightly more explorative flavor, Gotham Treats’ The Chelsea is the cookie for you.
Truffle Truffle from Animale Jakarta
For MRA’s American-Mediterrenian restaurant, Animale, one of the keys to consistently delivering memorable dining experiences is to keep their patrons guessing, and they do it by incorporating the philosophy of “what you will see will not always be what it seems” into their dishes. That vision is particularly true in one of their famous desserts, Truffle Truffle, serving ‘truffles’–one that looks almost exactly like the fungi kind, but actually is the chocolate kind–in a wooden treasure box. The punny-named-and-looking dessert is decadent yet delightfully balanced, combining a rich Valrhona chocolate ganache with sea salt caramel. And unlike other chocolate truffles you’ve ever had, expect your senses to be enticed by the intense whiff of actual truffle (fungi) aroma.
Wagyu Fat Brownie from Ironplate
Described as a ‘Franco-Asian steakhouse,’ Ironplate presents an avant-garde dining experience that incorporates contemporary steakhouse with a Japanese teppanyaki concept. The triumph of well-marbled beef doesn’t only translate to the steak and main part of the menu here; they sprinkled onto the dessert part, too, specifically in a dish called ‘Wagyu Fat Brownie’. Using rendered wagyu fat instead of butter, the brownies are unctuous and decadent, with fudgy texture and deep chocolatey flavor. But what makes the dish even more memorable is the supporting orchestra, consisting of miso toffee, peanut & bacon crumbs, popcorn tuile, and popcorn ice cream. The dish is not only a perfect complex swing of sweet and salty in a dessert but abundant in textures and flavors as well.
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