Fikscue’s Indo-Tex BBQ Is a Quintessentially Bay Area Creation

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efore I visited Fikscue, I had never eaten Texas barbecue in combination with homestyle Indonesian food — thick, jiggly slices of smoked brisket paired with a peanut-sauce slaw, or bites of a prehistoric-sized beef rib interspersed with fragrant nasi goreng fried rice. But by the time I’d finished my lunch, I was convinced this was just about the most ingenious act of culinary fusion anyone had ever concocted.

Clearly, I’m not the only one. At around 11:30 on a recent Sunday morning, a half hour before Fikscue’s tiny Alameda storefront opened for business, the queue along Park Street already stretched most of the way down the block. It’s been like this ever since husband-and-wife owners Fik and Reka Saleh opened their brick-and-mortar spot this past November. The restaurant is only open on Saturdays and Sundays, and just for lunch. By 3:30, they’re completely sold out — and even earlier for hot-ticket items like the dino ribs and beef back ribs.

Given how delicious the barbecue is — and it’s as good as any I’ve tasted in Northern California — it’s remarkable that Fik, the restaurant’s pitmaster and namesake, only started honing his craft about six years ago, after a life-changing trip to the barbecue heartlands of Austin, Texas. He taught himself how to smoke brisket by watching Aaron Franklin videos on YouTube and began making it at home for friends and family in a backyard offset smoker. He’d nerd out over barbecue minutiae, developing a fondness for the “mohawk” of the brisket — a part most pitmasters trimmed off that made for the best burnt ends, he discovered.

He got good, too. Good enough that when he lost his day job at the start of the pandemic, he asked himself, “Why not?” He started selling brisket via Instagram under the name Fikscue in June of 2020.

Meanwhile, Reka had made a study of incorporating leftover brisket into Indonesian food. She launched her own parallel Instagram pop-up, Gurih Table, selling traditional dishes alongside the couple’s earliest attempts at fusion, including a smoked brisket rendang plate she still considers her proudest creation. When the opportunity to open a full-on brick-and-mortar restaurant presented itself, it was an easy decision to combine the two concepts.

According to Reka and Fik, there isn’t really any culture of smoking meat in Indonesia, where both of them were born. But Fik, who grew up in Jakarta until his senior year of high school, remembers how everywhere he went there’d be street food vendors selling satay, Indonesia’s version of grilled meat on a stick. It’s part of what turned him into a “backyard person” — the designated steak-griller and burger-flipper at any outdoor function — once he moved to the Bay Area.

Put in that context, Fikscue’s hybridized cuisine just makes sense. I, too, was raised on the kind of first-generation Asian American immigrant cookout where we’d pair grilled meats with garlicky cold noodles, and wash our hot dogs down with lemon aiyu ladled from a punch bowl.

So, for me, the food at Fikscue was doubly enjoyable. Again, the barbecue itself is pure Texas style: The dino beef ribs aren’t just jaw-droppingly large; they’re smoked to a wobbly, luxurious tenderness you can cut through with a fork. The beef back ribs, a relative rarity in the Bay Area barbecue scene, are all crisp, chewy edges — a sheer delight to gnaw off the bone. And, of course, that smoked brisket is as good as advertised, juicy and full-flavored even without sauce, especially if you land a fatty, extra-jiggly slice.

What I loved even more was eating these smoked meats in combination with the various Indonesian side dishes — an experience that, for me, felt both nostalgic and thrillingly new. Eaten on its own, barbecue can be a little bit too rich and salty to enjoy in large quantities. What a marvel it was, then, to take a bite of brisket or beef rib and then cleanse my palate with Fikscue’s sweet, peanutty, Indonesian-inspired cucumber-and-cabbage slaw studded with chunks of fresh pineapple — so much more interesting than your standard vinegar-based slaw. And who knew that fried rice laced with fish sauce and corned beef, served fresh out of a hot wok, would be the perfect accompaniment to Texas-style ’cue?

One of the most enjoyable dishes was also the most overt in its Indo-Texan fusion. The balado plate looks indistinguishable from a classic Indonesian lunch: a mound of rice, a puffy and frilly-edged fried egg, luscious creamed-kale curry (maybe the most compulsively eatable thing on the plate), a pile of colorful garlic chips and a big hunk of smoked brisket or chicken tossed in fiery-red sambal. Somehow, the combination of flavors couldn’t have felt more natural.

During my recent Sunday lunchtime visit, the crowd looked to be about 90% Asian American, which the Salehs say isn’t atypical, though the particular mix of people varies from week to week. But no matter a customer’s background, a meal at Fikscue is likely to introduce them to something new. Barbecue aficionados might be trying Indonesian food for the first time. Folks who come for the Asian food might get their first taste of legit Texas-style barbecue. And since the restaurant is 100% halal, it also attracts Muslim customers who might be new to both cuisines.

As Reka puts it, “Our whole goal is to bridge these two food cultures and introduce [them] to the community.”

Perhaps the only thing keeping Indo-Tex barbecue from becoming the biggest thing in the Bay Area food scene right now? The long lines and limited hours mean the current iteration of Fikscue is mostly for the diehards — folks willing to plan a big chunk of their weekend around the experience, basically.

At first, the Salehs had hoped to stay open three or four days a week, but a (still unresolved) permitting snafu put a dent in those plans, preventing them from operating their smoker on-site. In the coming months, they’d like to add at least one more day to their weekly schedule — perhaps a non-barbecue dinner service focused on Indonesian-style satay grilling. In past pop-ups, they’ve grilled skewers of cubed, smoked brisket to great acclaim, and Reka has been doing R&D to try to perfect a version of ayam bakar, a classic Indonesian grilled chicken dish with wonderfully caramelized skin. They’d also like to serve Indonesian oxtail soup, but with smoked oxtail to give the dish a Fikscue-style twist.

“I think we’ve only scratched the surface of what we can offer,” Fik says.

As for those intimidatingly long lines, Fik says he’s always thinking about ways to make the restaurant more accessible to newcomers. But he’s also reminded of the fact that in Texas, it isn’t too uncommon to find barbecue spots set up the same way as theirs — open just two or three days a week with a limited supply of meat and, often, lines that stretch as long as four or five hours. For truly outstanding barbecue, people are willing to wait.

With that point of comparison, Fik says with a sheepish laugh, “I think an hour’s not too bad.”

Fikscue is open on Saturdays and Sundays, from noon–4 p.m. (or until sold out), at 1708 Park St. Ste. 120 in Alameda. The restaurant has a few tables set up in its small outdoor courtyard; otherwise, dine-in customers can bring their food into Alameda Island Brewing next door if they purchase a drink.