ViaVia: Epic rijsttafel and more

In Yogyakarta most tourists stay in a one area, consisting of a few street lying close together. Here you’ll find touristic and/or hip restaurants where you can get really good coffee and in some cases very western food like a croquette or the epic rijsttafel (translated rice table). ViaVia is on one of those streets and was about a 3 minute walk for us. Of course I immediately found out that I could get gluten-free food here, so we stopped by the next day. These are the gluten-free options at ViaVia, rijsttafel and more.

ViaVia consists of two buildings: the bakery and the restaurant. In the restaurant they also sell some bakery items. We have visited both.

Artisan bakery

The bakery is clean and trendy looking. They sell (expensive) jam and you can buy cookies from jars: ‘gluten-free chocolate nut cookies’ and ‘gluten-free cookies’. In a refrigerator are cakes, such as gluten-free chocolate cake, but also a few gluten looking pies. You can order gluten-free brown bread, which I promptly did. They also sell purple sweet potato bread, which sounded scary. I could pick up my bread the next day.

I was a little disappointed because I couldn’t buy anything else. But gluten and lactose free is a pretty difficult after all. If you can have lactose, you certainly have more choice.

It was not completely clear how clean the knife and cutting board were. How very exciting.

It was a lot of bread. Which was nice, since it was not particularly cheap. Keeping it edible turned out to be a bit difficult, I had no plastic container for storage and of course no toaster. I ate all of it as quickly as possible. Pretty fun to try, but not so great felt the need to I ordered another bread. But I was still happy; I didn’t get sick, which is always a good thing.

Restaurant

The restaurant has a good atmosphere. The ground floor is a bit packed compared to upstairs were there is a lot of light and space. You can get good coffee here (always plus one for proper coffee). It is quite pricey compared to other restaurants, but in addition to Indonesian food, they also serve Western dishes such as pasta, shawarma, fries, curry and pita sandwiches.

Want to know more about gluten-free food in Indonesia? Read my post here.

They do sell gluten-free bread, but me eating lactose-free ruins all when I order a sandwich. The bread comes from the bakery next to the restaurant, so that’s okay. But there is no good topping available. This doesn’t really make me happy. Two slices of toast with lettuce. Meh. Frankly, this food didn’t invite me to come back. Eventually we decide to order rijsttafel when we come here for another coffee. Mostly because it looks really good on the menu.

Rijsttafel

Although the dishes of rijsttafel are Indonesian, this meal was mainly served when Indonesia was a Dutch colony. The idea was to be able to enjoy different dishes and textures but also to impress guests. When Indonesia became independent, the Dutch took the rijsttafel back to the Netherlands. With the disappearance of the Dutch influence, the rijsttafel also vanished from Indonesia. Today, rijsttafel is hardly served anywhere anymore. But at ViaVia they did, and they could make it completely without gluten or lactose!

The starter consists of a light, clear soup with vegetables and an alcoholic beverage. And then the rijsttafel is served. Look at this awesome looking tray!

It’s soo tasty, and good. And so much food! But it is too good to pass up. I’m a little nervous eating some particular dished, it seems almost too good to be truly gluten free.

Ik dacht dat er misschien nog een licht nagerecht kwam, maar toen kwamen ze met dit enorme bord met fruit aanzetten! Het was heerlijk fris, maar ik zat ook echt bomvol toen dit ook op was. Deze glorieuze maaltijd kostte ons €19,80 en het was elke cent waard. En geen centje pijn naderhand.

I thought maybe there would be a light dessert, but then they came up with this huge plate of fruit! It was wonderfully fresh, but I was just crammed when we finished this. This glorious meal cost us 24 USD and it was worth every penny. And no funny business afterwards.

Wanna visit ViaVia yourself? At their website you can find all the information you need.