So Bali Bali restaurant and bar in Hong Kong. (Courtesy of So Bali Bali)

While many Indonesian investors spend their money to bring overseas cuisine home, Hong Kong businesswoman Ruby So commits to Indonesian food.

Young and vibrant, Ruby helped her father’s trading company after she finished her studies in the US. Last July, the 32-year-old woman opened her first restaurant on the busy Elgin Street, Soho, Central, in Hong Kong.

Known as the area “south of Hollywood Road”, Soho boasts culinary adventures from international restaurants and bars along Staunton Street, Elgin Street and Shelley Street.

Ruby named the restaurant So Bali Bali — a combination of her beloved father’s name and her favorite holiday destination in Indonesia.

Although she was born and grew up in Hong Kong, she was familiar with Indonesian food since she was a kid, thanks to her mother, who was born in Surabaya in East Java.

“I grew up eating Indonesian food because my mom is Chinese-Indonesian. That’s the main reason,” she said, explaining why she had decided to invest in Indonesian food.

Her mom, she said, made a delicious soto ayam (aromatic chicken soup) and rawon beef stew. Ruby, on the other hand, likes to cook tahu telor (tofu omelet served with bean sprouts in soy sauce).

Ruby’s keen business instincts called when she learned that the delicious food was worth taking to the market, but only lacked effective promotion and marketing.

“I am 100 percent Hong Kong. I like rawon and I believe other Hong Kong people will like it too, but no one has shown it to them yet,” she said.

Ruby has a serious manner about her and speaks in rapid fire. She is a typical businesswoman who does not waste a second in explaining her thoughts or conveying her opinions, and it does not take much time for her to turn a concern into an action. She recently brought two Hong Kong-based gourmet reporters to experience culinary and cultural tourism in Jakarta.

As they explored the city, they visited several tourism spots, such as Kota Tua (the Old Town) in West Jakarta, Jl. Surabaya in Menteng, Central Jakarta and Ancol in North Jakarta. They also savored soto ayam, chicken satay, rendang (beef cooked with spices and coconut milk), martabak (pancake) and the most expensive coffee in the world — luwak (civet cat) coffee.

“I mentioned to them that this soup [rawon] is very good, but there is no one to promote it. So, I hope they can now do something to make rawon more popular in Hong Kong,” she said.

Ruby said she believes in the future of Indonesian food in Hong Kong because the city caters to and is open to international tastes.

“Hong Kong is a totally different story. They like Italian, French, Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese food. So, why not Indonesian food?”

In order to ensure she delivers authentic Indonesian flavors that are also friendly to Hong Kong’s taste buds, Ruby hired Indonesian and Hong Kong chefs as well as Indonesian waitresses to work at So Bali Bali. The waitresses, she said, could speak Cantonese, English and some Mandarin because they had already worked in Hong Kong and had gotten married in the city.

Her two-story restaurant, with some 120 seats, offers a variety of Indonesian foods, such as soto ayam, sayur asem (sour vegetable soup), udang bumbu Bali (Balinese style tiger prawn), pepes ikan (steamed fish), fried rice and fried noodles. She said, so far, rendang was the best-selling item on the menu.

Ruby admits that opening a restaurant is a tough job because there are many elements to think about, ranging from expensive rent in a prime location, hiring the right chefs and setting up the restaurant’s management.

Her first step was to scout a location and to do some research to find out how people liked Indonesian food. She also traveled to Jakarta, Surabaya and Bali to buy decorations for her restaurant.

“You should have the budget, the vision and management,” she said, adding that she invested up to US$40,000, $15,000 of which was for the monthly rent of the 2,000-square-foot location.

She has no difficulty in keeping the kitchen fully stocked with Indonesian ingredients as the restaurant can buy from distributors who import food from overseas. She also asks her friends and relatives coming from Indonesia to bring some ingredients with them, to keep costs down and products fresh.

In order to attract people’ attention, she holds a Balinese dance performance outside the eatery on weekends. Her customers, she said, are predominantly Western people who often visit the Soho area.

She realizes her restaurant is a relative newcomer compared to other prominent Indonesian restaurants that have built dozens of years of history in Hong Kong. However, she is confident that her strategic location and the fresh building will offer serious advantages.

Like other restaurants, she experienced hardship during the first year. She said Hong Kong applies strict food sanitation regulations. A food agency official can arrive for a random inspection anytime – sometimes once per month.

“I can’t say business is really good, but it is increasing,” Ruby said, adding that her ventures in Indonesian-related business were far from over.

Ruby is looking for an opportunity to open another Indonesian restaurant in Jakarta, Shanghai or Kwun Tong in China. She is also eying prospects in Balinese and Yogyakarta fine art.

She is considering mixing the concept of a restaurant and an art gallery — a combination that is gaining popularity in Hong Kong.

“I like Indonesian art. The paintings here are very good and they are not common in Hong Kong yet. [Art] is my second step. I still have to look for the right people, and then we can combine everything — both food and art.”

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