- The stalls,
- The food courts and restaurants in the fancy malls, and
- The fancy restaurants and buffets in the fancy hotels.
Oddly, standard stand-alone “restaurants” play less of a role here than in any other major city I know. (Stand-alone stores are also less important, could it be that the hot weather and traffic encourages a clumping of retail visits into large malls?) And the very small restaurants can be good, but overall I think they are dominated by the stalls.
Stalls
When it comes to the stalls, you will stumble upon a bunch and then you can simply choose what looks good. Stalls in the better parts of town appear more salubrious and indeed probably are.
Food Courts
The food courts are good, and clean, but too homogenized for my taste. Plastic trays reign. Here is mainly for everybody, there was no distinction both rich and poor had their way to eat here and the standard of services is a general standard and there was no specific class been celebrated. If you choose to eat in the food court it means you will be eating publicly where everyone passing by will be seeing you while you enjoy your mean.
However, it is very low cost as there are nothing special about it. You come and sit down to place of your choice while the food is been served. Here there are many varieties of foods where you an make choice on your own. Different restaurant with their special dishes.
The fancy restaurants and buffets in the fancy hotels.
The fancy buffets I would never go to if I lived here, but they are a good way to sample many dishes during the course of a meal. I recommend them for tourists and newcomers. The key to eating well from them is to choose those dishes which require outside aid for their assembly.
The key question is then the optimal ratio of stalls to fancy buffets, and that depends on how many days you have in town. The fancy buffets are also better for some of the fancier dishes, for instance as might involve lamb or crabs, or for dishes from other regions of the country.
And that is how you eat well in Jakarta. Knowledge of specific restaurants is not the key here.