Quick review of Semar, the Indonesian restaurant on Langley Road in Newton Centre--thumbs down. I really wanted to like this place. I've been searching for Indonesian food in the Boston area for a while. Semar has been open for four months. I went there on a Saturday from 4pm to 5pm and tried their all-day buffet ($9/person, every Saturday, buffet menu changes from week to week). They're open until 11 or midnight, every or nearly every day. Service was very friendly, decor was surprisingly well done for a new restaurant: pleasant, light, and spacious. The buffet was: a salty soup flavored with bits of meat, deep fried tofu and veggie balls, a spicy dish of noodles, mushrooms, and dried shrimp, fried chicken, rice, bok choi, shrimp toast, watermelon chunks, and tapioca/coconut jellied cakes were on the buffet. Soup was good, the noodle, mushroom, and shrimp dish was very good, tofu balls were a bit stale and soggy, rice was a bit dried out, fried chicken was OK, shrimp toast was not crisp, there was a bit of tin foil on one of my watermelon chunks. The bok choi tasted like, well, almost rotten vegetables. I'm not a bok choi regular, maybe this is how it's supposed to taste, but I can eat kim chee and hundred year eggs without thinking about all the times I've let things compost in my fridge. During my meal, I saw a staff member pick up one of the small cakes from the buffet with her fingers and ate it. Later, the same person placed new cakes on the buffet, again with her fingers. This wasn't enough to spook me, but combined with the non-fresh food (not counting the bok choi) and the piece of foil in the fruit, I became a bit concerned about the restaurant hygiene. It was a slow time of day, and my party was the only group in the place, so I shouldn't be too surprised that the buffet wasn't fresh. They probably should cut the buffet back to their peak hours, there were no other parties while I was there (from around 4pm to 5pm, Saturday). Like I said, I came into this restaurant wanting them to succeed. Especially since it seems like it's a family operation. Unfortunately, the food wasn't great and I got spooked. Doubt I'll return. If you go at off-peak hours, skip the buffet and try the menu instead. --Pat
Boston, MA