Shooting the Menu at Jakarta's First Hidden Gem Hakka Restaurant
In October 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, my father-in-law and I picked up our cameras together for Jakarta's oldest Hakka restaurant, hidden down an alley in Glodok since 1925.
Wong Fu Kie has been called Jakarta's first and oldest Hakka restaurant, tucked down a narrow, unmarked alley in Glodok since 1925. There's no signage. You find it by smell and by asking around. It is the kind of place with a menu built on decades of the same recipes, the kind where regulars already know exactly what they are going to order before they sit down.
In October 2020, it came time to update their physical menu. My father-in-law took on the layout and design. He asked if I wanted to come along and shoot the food.
It felt like a full circle moment. That same year, I had already been photographing things for myself: street scenes, macro shots, small details most people would walk right past. This was different. This time we were actually working side by side, cameras out, shooting plate after plate of food that needed to look as good on paper as it tasted on the table.
Food photography has its own quiet challenges. Steam disappears fast. Sauces pool or dry out depending on how long a dish sits. Garnish wilts if you take too long deciding on an angle. None of that is dramatic, but it adds up, and it forces you to work quickly and decisively in a way that street or macro photography never really demanded from me.
By the end, we had shot the full range of the menu together, and he laid it all out into something the restaurant could actually print and hand to guests.
It is a small project in the grand scheme of things. No award, no big reveal. Just two people with cameras, in a restaurant that has been feeding people the same way since 1925, in an alley most people would walk straight past.
