USC’s Students Know the Tastes of Indonesia at Bali Corner Stand

For some reason, Indonesian food isn’t easy to find in Los Angeles. But there is Bali Corner, not a restaurant but a stand in a food court near USC. It has served consistently good food for almost seven years. And according to a Dutch-Indonesian friend born in Bandung on the island of Java, the food is authentic.

Bandung is also the birthplace of Marianne Lim, who runs Bali Corner. That means, technically, Lim’s place is more Javanese than Balinese.

Lim says she cooks to please the taste of USC’s Indonesian students. And they obviously like their food sweet. The sweet source is often kecap (pronounced ketjap), a sweetened soy sauce.

At Bali corner, kecap traces a pattern on the peanut sauce spooned lavishly over satay. It’s trickled over a grilled chicken leg and sweetens the broth for soto ayam , a soup generously packed with chicken, rice noodles, rice cake, cabbage and a hard-cooked egg.

Even shoestring potatoes taste sweet here. That is because they have been transformed by sweet and spicy seasonings into sambal goreng kering , which is a fried, dry side dish. The intense heat of the red chile sambal that accompanies most dishes is mitigated with sweetness. And acar , a sweet-sour relish, is spooned onto the plates like salad.

Nasi-- rice--is the base of an Indonesian meal, and one of the most appealing dishes here is nasi rames , a rice combination plate. The highlight is beef rendang : beef cooked with coconut milk and spices. Some of the sauce from the beef is spooned over the rice, and the accompaniments are a highly seasoned hard cooked egg ( sambal goreng telur ), shoestring potatoes, acar , chile sambal and krupuk (crisp shrimp chips).

A ceremonial occasion in Indonesia calls for nasi kuning , a collection of foods served with rice that is colored yellow with turmeric. Only dry foods are arranged on the rice so that the feast can be eaten easily with traditional Indonesian cutlery--the fingers of the right hand. Grilled chicken and shreds of omelet pancake come with nasi kuning , as well as the acar , shoestring potatoes and chile sambal that come with the nasi rames.

Order the soup called bakso in Asia and you get a bowl of broth to which you add tidbits selected from a wide range of prepared foods. Bali Corner offers a set bakso. But that is no disadvantage, because the additions--thin noodles, fish balls, freshly made won ton, bean sprouts and green vegetables--are piled so generously into the bowl that there is more substance than broth.

Peanut sauce smothers gado gado, a salad of vegetables, deep-fried tofu and slices of dense, smooth rice cake. Vegetarian delight, a hefty plate of fried tofu and vegetables, is inundated with peanut sauce, then topped with chopped peanuts. And a thin version of the sauce is spooned over risoles , a sort of crepe folded into a rectangle and stuffed with chicken and vegetables.

For dessert, there are icy, sweet drinks such as cendol-- a coconut milk beverage full of squiggly green bean flour strands; es cincau , which contains dark cubes of grass jelly, and es campur, which combines grass jelly, the green squiggles and lychees in clear syrup.

The top price I paid here was $3.99 for a special of spicy chicken in coconut sauce. Most plates are $3.80. Bakso is $3.50, and the drinks are $1.25.

Bali Corner, University Village, 3333 S. Hoover St., Los Angeles. (213) 749-9552. Open Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Cash and traveler’s checks only. Parking available.