On my last night in Yogyakarta, I met up with friends of a friend at this vegetarian restaurant she had recommended, Mila’s. The restaurant seemed to have really good reviews online and also from everyone I met who’d ate there, so I was excited to go. And also for a break from
Indonesian food. I mean, I love fried rice as much as anyone, but a girl can get tired of the friedness and the riceness. So after a long taxi ride I finally found Mila’s, a little gateway on a tiny street that opens into a jungly courtyard. There are platforms with tables around the grassy center, and also little mats to sit on. Very Indonesia and very charming. The people I met with were all Mila’s veterans, so they helped me find the winners on the huge menu. I started out with the highly recommended Jawa Smoothie which was so so ridiculously delicious. Kind of like a thick juice, I think it was some kind of mixture of banana, coconut, and maybe tamarind. Tasty. Then we had yummy tempeh and these super good spicy corn croquettes. I liked the tempeh and loooved the croquettes (they’re in the picture.)
Then I got the (also highly recommended) Milas Salad, which had: lettuce, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, cashews, apples, lime, and this insanely good (and I think homemade) cheese. Topped with tsatziki-like dressing. The apples, dressing, and cheese made the salad a total winner. For my main dish I had pesto pasta, which wasn’t near as good as my Mama’s, but pretty good, and exactly the non-Indonesian food I had been craving. After we all finished our meals I was curious to try something from the two pages of desserts on the menu, and convinced everyone that we could in fact finish three desserts, no matter how full we were.
We ordered Tutti Frutti (ice cream and fruit with honey and OJ), a honey lime pancake (crepe), and something called Sweet Balls. Fruit and ice cream, good but not remarkable, pancakes, super good–lime + honey = :), and the sweet balls were really weird at first but actually really delish. Although I have no idea what they were. Little deep-fried balls of sugary tastiness. So, overall, an excellent experience. It was fun to meet new people, especially ones living in Yogyakarta doing cool stuff, and the restaurant was exactly what I wanted and totally delicious.
anna cotta 
Ask around…the “sweet balls” sound like gulab jamun, an Indian sweet of delightfully weird provenance. Basically cheese (or milk) balls, deep-fried and then plunged into rosewater-scented syrup right out of the oil. They soak up the syrup as they cool, and are just ridiculously delicious. Plus they have a fabulous mouth feel: the syrupy-oily-cake-ish combo in each bite is awesome. So until you find out what exactly you were eating, I’m going to picture GJs!