Aug. 22, 2025

The newest addition to the food court at The Empire Mall serves Indonesian cuisine.

Eauthenentic Achipelago Taste, or EAT, is the creation of Grace Prully Ingelin and her family.

She moved with her husband and son to Sioux Falls three years ago from Indonesia, a Southeast Asian country that is made up of thousands of islands between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Ingelin owned a small restaurant there that served dim sum and other dishes, but she closed it during the COVID pandemic, she said.

She’s excited about bringing a cuisine to Sioux Falls that most people aren’t familiar with, eventually serving entrees like lontong, a curry dish with rice cakes, and soto, the Indonesian version of chicken noodle soup.

The idea is that customers feel like they’re “traveling to the world through food and taste of culture in every bite,” she said.

That uniqueness makes it more difficult to find ingredients here, though.

One dish should be covered with banana leaves while it cooks, adding a good smell and flavor to dish that includes sticky rice, she said. Using plastic wrap just isn’t the same.

For now, there’s a limited menu with sweet and  savory versions of martabak, similar to a pancake that’s filled with ingredients like cheese, peanuts or chocolate.

For entrees, Ingelin makes chicken or shrimp fried rice.

Indonesia includes many people of Chinese ancestry, so those dishes are popular there too, Ingelin said. She describes Indonesian food, however, as more complex than Chinese food because of all the spices.

If people enjoy her cooking, she hopes to eventually open a restaurant in another location.