On display at their new kiosk in Emeryville’s Public Market, Jennifer and Perry Huang’s Indonesian desserts look like an array of edible precious gemstones. The lapis legit, or thousand layer cake, is Perry’s favorite. Not only does he bake it, but he also eats a slice every morning with a cup of coffee. As the primary chef, Jennifer runs Nusa in Emeryville while Perry continues to front their stand at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market in San Francisco on Saturdays.
“We’re a small business, and we literally do everything,” Perry said. “From baking to doing the payroll.” The desserts are of Dutch Indonesian origin. Both the lapis legit and nastar, or pineapple tartlets, incorporate wheat flour. “The Dutch came up with the cooking method,” he said. But other cakes are traditional Indonesian desserts, such as the kue lapis which is made with sticky rice, tapioca flour and coconut custard.
He describes the multi-layered kue lapis cake as “softer than a gummy bear,” and closer to the more familiar texture of mochi. Perry felt skeptical about introducing ketan srikaya to the American palate. To his surprise, people fell in love with this sweet-rice-and-pandan-flavored custard. Ketan srikaya, he said, sells out every weekend.
To infuse pandan into a chiffon cake called bolu pandan, the Huangs get the leaves at Berkeley Bowl. But, Perry said, they’re not as good as frozen pandan imported from Indonesia. “When you crush the leaves to get the juice out, it’s really strong,” he said. They found that the flavor of the fresh leaves wasn’t as intense. “The soil in Southeast Asia is volcanic, like Hawaii,” Perry said. “So the nature of the plant is also different if you grow it here.”
Perry recalled the Huangs’ collective experience when they first immigrated to the United States from Southeast Asia. “We could not find our food here,” he said. That experience has since changed. Because Southeast Asian cuisines share some common reference points, Nusa sources some of their ingredients at Vietnamese supermarkets. “Vietnamese, Filipinos—we all use pandan and tapioca flour,” he said.
Jennifer started cooking both savory and sweet Indonesian dishes in an effort to make the food she missed. She went on to make those dishes as a cottage food producer. For over a decade, Jennifer also had a corporate career in the hospitality business before she joined La Cocina, the San Francisco restaurant incubator. La Cocina has launched many of the previous tenants who have rotated in and out of the same Emeryville kiosk, including Fernay McPherson of Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement and Lamees Dabhour of Mama Lamees.
Nusa’s savory dishes, Perry said, are eaten in Indonesia and familiar to American tourists who have visited the region. “For me, it’s comfort food,” he said. At the farmers’ market though, apart from lemper, a mochi rice chicken roll ($3.75), the Huangs primarily sell dessert. Now that they have the kiosk, they expanded the menu to include items such as nasi goreng ($14), a fried-rice dish, a javanese salad ($15) and a turmeric chicken noodle soup ($16). Because the kitchen and prep area in Emeryville is small, Nusa continues to maintain a commercial kitchen in San Francisco.
It takes hours to cook the spice mixes necessary to make beef rendang ($21), a caramelized beef dish. To make the layers of lapis legit cake, “You broil the cake, layer by layer, instead of baking it,” Perry said. “You have to make the batter, pour a little bit at a time and then broil it until it caramelizes—and you repeat the process 20 times.”
Their initial challenge upon opening in Emeryville in May was figuring out how to gauge the volume of food to prepare. During that first month, Nusa often ran out of food. Perry said that their retail experience following their soft opening phase has been a good one. “It really validates the idea because Jennifer is serving the most popular Indonesian dishes, and they really seem to be resonating with people,” he said.
Nusa, open Tue-Thu, 11am to 7pm; Fri-Sat, 11am to 7:30pm; Sun 11am to 6pm. 5959 Shellmound St., Emeryville. 408.304.7027. nusasf.square.site.
