Recently, I have decided to try cafes or restaurants that I have never been to. Usually, I would play it safe and went to eateries that I have always been to. This time, my place of choice would be Goedang Koffie. Based on its name, it would be best described as a place that mostly serve coffee, or if there were other choices, it would be small bites like toast or sandwiches or slices of cakes to go with coffee. Well, in reality, this cafe/restaurant only serve limited range of coffee with more choices on other kind of drinks and food.

The restaurant is located on a small road near one of the popular campus in Medan, which is not that hard to find. The feel inside the cafe was nice - some rustic/country ambience with touches of unique decorations. We got a seating area with an interesting ceiling. The ceiling is decorated with books hanged randomly along with wooden rulers and lamp bulbs. Overall, the rooms (there are numbers of section inside the eatery) gives too much warm lighting that made most of the food snaps looks the same. One thing that I am still confused is that I do not find any correlation between the restaurant name and everything inside except some pictures of huge coffee beans in the entrance area. Well, the place doesn't really matter, it is what they serve that matters.

I am not really a beverage person, I love to drink plain water to go along with anything I eat, so, unless there is a super special beverage that drive people mad and queue for that, I wouldn't try most of the beverage other than tea, coffee, smoothies, or juice (wait, but isn't that most of the cafe only serve those? forget it). Goedang Koffie provides great amount of beverage choices to choose from, most of them are OK - no complaints at all.

Let's move to the main subject - food. This cafe/restaurant serves variety of dishes which are always found in all-round-cafe. Small bites, western/eastern appetisers, main course of well-known dishes such as pasta, rice, noodles, steaks, etc - a safe (but turns out dangerous) decision most of Medan cafe/restaurant use. By this preference, most of the dishes those kind of restaurant provide would not stand out and finally becoming average and sometimes boring. Thankfully, Goedang Koffie do make some of their dishes good and likeable for me.

Let's start with appetisers/small bites. We ordered Crispy Chicken Thai - small fillets of chicken, fries, served with Thai sauce. The sauce was good, it went pretty well with the perfectly fried and crispy chicken along with the nicely done fries. This dish would give a good start of a meal.

Another appetiser we ordered was chicken wings - which is one of the new menus on the list. Thinking that how perfectly cooked the other chicken was - didn't guarantee that other chicken dish would be as good. Well, by judging how tender the meat was, it was also cooked perfectly, but taste-wise, I have ever had better chicken wings - it could be how the seasoning that was not really going well with my taste bud.

That evening, we decided to try most of the menu variety - and one of them was pasta. We went with Alfredo-style and fettuccine as our favourite choice of pasta. It tasted quite good, creamy and savoury. We dived into it and finished it pretty quickly and it could be one of our favourite dishes of the night.

Chicken is always the easiest and safest choice when we are faced with meats and steaks. The chicken fillet we received was good. Despite the very standard presentation of the dish, it tasted quite nice. The mushroom sauce paired decently with the generous portion of the chicken. Our tummies were satisfied!

We also ordered a very widely found Indonesian dish, which is fried rice. Indonesia's fried rice is ranked as one of the best-tasting dishes in the world. Making a fried rice good is actually an easy task. To make it exceptional, it requires luck or great skills preparing it. Our fried rice came out almost exceptional - far beyond "good". I loved how the "cabe hijau" as the main seasoning elevate the fried rice quality. It was also not too spicy that I could enjoy it comfortably. Moreover, the not-overcooked fried egg and well-seasoned traditionally fried chicken breast also brought the fried rice as a whole dish that satisfied me that evening.

A very authentic dish, usually found in Binjai, with its noodle's crunchiness and savoury sauce also didn't fail to impress me. Even though the dish didn't fit everyone's taste, the noodle and the sauce, for me, was good enough.

There are pizzas to choose from their menu if you are interested, sadly, I forgot to try their Calzone pizza. I ordered the pizza which have the most diverse toppings. I expected it to be good, but to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. First of all, the pizza smelled really inviting (which was good!), but when it got into my tongue, it felt bland. I could not taste anything in particular in contrast of how diverse the toppings were - it could be because it was too diverse that nothing stood out. Other things were how wet the pizza was and how the toppings could not held up that made it a messy situation having this particular dish.

Our experience that night, in particular, was GOOD, no less. I, myself, enjoyed the food that I would go back again. There are several dishes that could be improved, but, then, there are some dishes that turns out quite memorable and would be recommended. I do look forward having another chance to visit this cafe in the future, you should, too.

GOEDANG KOFFIE
Jl. Mahoni No. 5, Medan, Indonesia
Everyday, 10.00 - 24.00
+62 818 438 468 / +62 61 453 2822