Located at the heart of Jakarta's Chinatown is Yi Xiang, one of the few restaurants that truly have original roots from China. The cook’s family came all the way from Shenzhen, China. Even ordering is more efficient when done in Chinese language; they can only speak Bahasa Indonesia minimally. You can order through the waiter, but because of the language boundary, the waiter sometimes can’t perfectly communicate your order to the cook as well.
Yi Xiang’s speciality is pio/pioh, a dish made of the meat and shell of turtles. In Indonesia, it is said that the dish is made using green turtles, not the endangered soft-shelled turtles used in China. The turtle body parts will be poached in some Chinese herbs, goji berries, ginger, and God-knows what else. If you’re interested in trying pio, Yi Xiang suggests diners to reserve a day in advance, so they have plenty of time to prepare the soup to develop a more complex flavour.
