Sky Cafe
1122 Washington Ave.
Philadelphia
My shopping list when I set out for South Philly last week read: Lysol wipes, curtain rods, instant ramen, chairs.
The contents of my stomach when I returned empty-handed one hour later included: barbecued pork, wontons, anchovies, avocado, mango jelly, curry, chia seeds, collard greens, coconut meat, condensed milk, meatballs.
I had left my empty apartment to buy cleaning supplies, microwaveable meals, and affordable furniture along Washington Avenue. That’s when I stumbled upon the strip mall restaurant that would postpone my move-in to a University City three-bedroom by yet one more day: The Sky Cafe.
The Indonesian eatery is perhaps the most discreet spot in the three-walled perimeter of Asian shops and signage known as Wing Phat Plaza. When I entered, I was not expecting to experience one of the best meals of my young life.
I was looking for a hefty Hungry Man lunch to fuel a dreaded afternoon of hauling boring, big-brand apartment essentials out of big-box stores lining the Washington Avenue Factory District to pack in my friend’s boxy, black car.
Scanning at the menu, a long line-up of $12-range rice and noodle dishes accompanied by pages of technicolor-esque photos, expanded my appetite even further — not just for baseline calories, but for flavor, presentation, and, yes, some pizzazz.
The two of us got all of that and more for under $40.
The first item I ordered was Es Teler, a desserty beverage combining shaved ice with condensed milk, shards of coconut flesh, chunks of fatty avocado, and loads of light-hearted gelatinous goodies, including hydrated chia seeds and rectangles of jello (pictured above). It was more of an experimentation in textures than tastes.
I immediately slurped up half of the sugary concoction with the help of an XL pink straw before deciding to save the rest to keep our car’s cup holder company lest I go into a sucrose-induced coma.
After that decadent but kid-like fruit cocktail, a sophisticated but similarly fun plate of nutrients appeared before me.
My pupils dilated, I’m sure, as I eyed the Mie Komplit, a big bowl of homemade egg noodles adorned with two tanned and crispy wontons, thick blossoms of bright-red BBQ pig, and kernels of richly salted ground pork. The noodles were tossed with strands of Chinese broccoli, whose bitterness cut through a sense of sweetness otherwise encouraged by one soy- and star-anise-marinated egg that was just custardy enough to recall my earlier es teler-related euphoria.
All that was served with a humble side bowl of cleansing chicken broth, dotted with a mystery meatball and a spongey fish cake.
Both the drink and the plate felt like respective lessons in layering fats: Nutty noodles; glistening slabs of lard; pristine, cleansing bone broth; those clumps of mild avocado mixed with coconut meat. Yet no part of the meal came across as oily or greasy — just abundantly flavorful and enriching.
I followed my gut instinct and began to pour the broth onto my noodles, until my friend shrieked for me to stop. The more obvious way to eat the dish, he pointed out, was to dip the noodles into the broth. I was skeptical — until I noticed my delicious wontons wilting within the steam bath. And until a Google search confirmed that the latter method is indeed the more common approach to consumption.
The Mie Komplit is an example of Chinese influence on Indonesian cuisine, restaurant Manager Betty Yu pointed out. My friend’s meal — Nasi Lemaka Ayam Goreng — was a purer representation of straightforward Indonesian culinary tradition, Yu said.
That meal was made up of fried chicken thigh topped with anchovy-twanged collard greens, then tucked into a bed of coconut rice beside a cup of golden curry. The core Indonesia staple symbolized in that plate, Yu said, is some green chile sambal.
She brought me a container full of red sambal so I could test out the Indonesian hot sauce on my Chinese noodles.
Little did I know that the jar of flecked chili paste I keep at home to season nearly every meal is, in fact, called sambal. At Sky Cafe, they churn their own sauce from scratch, resulting in a bright juice of churned chilis and lime.
While the noodles could sell as fine dining whatever rather than $12 holiness, the down-to-earth, no-frills slice of strip mall real estate serving as the vehicle for their distribution is indicative of Sky Cafe’s organic origins.
Yu’s mother, Lily Tija, started family-run Sky Cafe back in 2010, eight years after the crew first moved from Indonesia to New York.
According to Yu, Tija chose to move to Philly after discovering that the city hosts one of America’s largest Indonesian communities. At first she worked alongside other immigrants in factories, where knowing English was not a requisite to employment. Upon realizing that all of her friends and family were working so hard as to make home cooking impossible, Tija quit her job and began catering out of her personal kitchen to Indonesian families happy to have cheap, homemade meals delivered to their doors.
Eventually Tija decided, with help from Yu, to turn the business into a legal, more widely accessible venture. Despite challenges, like their first restaurant burning down in 2015, Sky Cafe has stood successful for more than a decade, even opening a second location in Queens, N.Y.
I floated deliriously out of Sky Cafe knowing I had been granted an energy too delicious and generous to spend shopping for generic household goods. I instead treated myself to a sunny afternoon wandering Wing Phat Plaza, bathing in the golden light shed by the crispy geese under heat lamps at Wing Kee China Imports and stopping by BB TeeHouse for a dessert of coffee-stained egg pudding.
Returning to my computer to write, I found that the plaza is certainly not slept on — Anthony Bourdain even reviewed Pho 75, yet another restaurant positioned right across from Sky Cafe, on one of his shows, The Layover. (Watch that clip here).
I’d also have to edit my earlier shopping list — and add Pho 75, the seven-day dim sum house right next door, and every other Asian eatery hidden inside the mom-and-pop mall.
Sky Cafe is open every day but Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
