JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Jakarta's gritty sidewalks are hardly a place to linger. Yet, thanks to economic hardship, street cafes are flourishing in the tropical, pollution-soaked capital of 10 million people.
Stripped of their jobs by the worst financial crisis in decades, bank clerks, actors and real estate developers have opened up dozens of makeshift eateries around the Indonesian capital.Flickering candles or gas lamps beckon from the patios of private homes or at streetside tarpaulins where menus list oxtail soup and other Indonesian specialties.
Even here the crisis intrudes. Many of the outdoor restaurants had to shut temporarily during a recent wave of mob rioting and deadly fighting between anti-government student protesters and security forces.
Catering to white-collar workers who can no longer afford to eat at regular restaurants, many simple cafes also offer steaks, lasagna, milk shakes and cappuccino. The quality, and profits, vary.
"In a hotel, if you order a steak, you have to pay 85,000 rupiah ($10). Here, in our cafe, it's only 12,000 ($1.40) or 15,000 rupiah ($1.75)," said Rudy Salam, a sometime soap opera actor and former cruise ship steward who runs a cafe named after himself.
Indonesia is one of the Asian countries hardest hit by economic turmoil, with millions of people sliding into poverty despite huge injections of international aid. In Jakarta, many restaurants have been forced to close their doors.
Salam's place is one of dozens of outdoor restaurants that opened in a huge plaza near the city's national monument, a tall spire of marble topped by a gold-leaf sculpture in the shape of a flame.
During the unrest in early November, soldiers slept under the tents put up by the fledgling restaurateurs.
Eager to generate jobs in a city where hundreds of thousands of workers are idle, the local government encouraged the cafe owners to do business and collects 12 percent of their revenues.
The name of one restaurant, the Reform Cafe, recalls the riots and pro-democracy protests that preceded the downfall in May of President Suharto after 32 years of authoritarian rule.