Beverage options include a cooler of exotic fruit juices and imported sodas and a large jug of water. There's warm rice in a large rice steamer, a staple that is replenished many times throughout the day.
Although most diners are Indonesian, drawn to the smells and tastes of the vibrant country they've left behind, a growing number of locals have discovered, and become addicted to, Widjojo's zesty cooking.
Customers like Aaron MacLennan, a teacher at Hunter Elementary in Kensington, who first tasted Indonesian cooking in Jakarta, where he recently spent two weeks.
"This is comparable to what I ate there," he said. "It's the best Indonesian food in Philadelphia, a great mix of Indian and Chinese flavors. I heard that Indonesian women have to know how to cook 100 dishes when they get married so their husbands don't go out to food stands to eat. I believe it!"
Widjojo opened her modest eatery seven years ago, the first true sit-down cafe in a neighborhood that is home to many of the city's estimated 5,000 Indonesians. She had run a restaurant for many years in the Indonesian consulate in New York where she fed dignitaries including former Nixon security adviser Henry Kissinger and Indonesian President Suharto.
When the consulate cafe closed in 1989, she concentrated on catering, until friends from Philadelphia persuaded her to bring her culinary prowess south. She now divides her time between New York - her husband, Hari, is a longtime waiter at the Ritz-Carlton - and her business in South Philly, where she lives next door to the restaurant.
Her daughter Malia, who plans to attend J&A Culinary School on Broad Street, helps out in the kitchen.
The Indonesian population in Philadelphia has been slowly rising since 1998, the year of a large-scale emigration of Indo-Chinese from the main island. As is the case with any cultural migration, the newcomers to Philadelphia brought their cuisine along for the ride.
