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Getting out of Jakarta for the weekend is tricky. A trip to the beach takes at least two hours and visiting nearby islands is expensive. Even if you’re flying out, the drive to the airport, more often than not, takes longer than the actual flight.

So Bandung is an obvious choice. Nestled in the mountains, the city is a cool respite from Jakarta and offers plenty of music, shopping and eating.

It was the latter that I was interested in on a recent long weekend. I decided to leave the factory outlets alone and concentrate on edible treats. What I was craving for was a good, wholesome regional meal.

What I found was a simple roadside eatery that offered both a good meal and a challenge. A large sign that reads Nasi Pedeus serves as an invitation for the hungry to chow down on eponymous spicy rice six evenings a week at the junction of Jalan HOS Cokroaminoto, better known as Pasirkaliki, and Jalan Dr Rajiman.

With only six tables and a seating capacity of no more than three dozen, Nasi Pedeus was packed the evening I went.

We joined a line of famished-looking locals beside a cart on which a variety of dishes were spread.

When we finally made it to the front of the line, we began piling steamed rice on the brown paper that lined our woven rattan plates. There are no frills here. The service is great — because you are your own waiter.

They were not joking when they say this nasi is pedas (the eatery’s name is a jokey rendering of the long-vowelled Sundanese pronunciation of “pedas”). The laurel of bright red chili peppers on the sign should be taken as a clear warning for those who can’t handle such an explosive experience.

“Our food is supposed to make people’s tongues hiss with heat,” said Verya Sandy and Ronald Atmodjo, the duo behind the eatery, which opened last November.

If you are a stickler of the age-old belief “never trust a skinny chef,” don’t worry. The creators of Nasi Pedeus may be stick-thin, but chef James Al-dzikri Hassan is far from it. He’s a sizeable man who knows his food. He wolfs down at least a plateful of his nasi pedeus each day to ensure it’s just right.

To sample just how good the cooking is, Sandy suggested their two best-selling items, cumi asin cabe hijau (fried salty squid with green chilies) and ayam suwir pedas (spicy shredded chicken dish).

You can spoon as much of the dishes as you want from their containers on the counter. But if you’re feeling brave, you can have them blended with steamed rice and a rather terrifying dose of chili paste. The blend is then wrapped in a banana leaf cone.

Aside from steamed white rice, Nasi Pedeus also serves nasi liwet , which is rice cooked in coconut milk, or an even more aromatic version with lemongrass, bay leaves, shallots and scallions.

Other sumptuous treats include stir-fried greens, bean sprouts and oyster mushrooms, angsio kaki ayam (stewed chicken claws) and tofu marinated in sweet soy sauce. The fried cured duck eggs with runny yolks are worth a try for their unusually sharp salty taste.

“Sometimes, we have a different menu on different days,” Sandy said. “Some days, we might serve lamb ribs marinated in chili paste. On others, we serve stewed meatballs or sauteed chicken intestines.”

The key to the eatery’s fiery dishes without the doubt is the sambal (chili sauce) . There is a real art to making good, fresh sambal, and this eatery’s two types are only for the well-trained.

The two sambals sits in large containers by the cashier. The first is a deep red, and the owners say it is light. Perhaps it is by their standards. The second, meanwhile, is deceivingly pale. It is full of chili seeds and is far more lethal.

And if you couldn’t care less about your cholesterol levels, a succulent ending to your meal would be the pre-packed chunks of crispy chicken skin. “Its batter doesn’t contain flour, only a dash of baking soda. It is almost pure skin, deliciously crunchy skin,” Sandy said.

Since its opening, Nasi Pedeus is almost always full.

In Bandung, hanging out at eateries is a favorite pastime for young people.

“Even though the seating is very basic, customers love to linger and chat for some time when they’re done eating,” Ronald said.

It’s a warm comfortable place, and you can see why customers stay for hours. There is nothing to bother you here, except for the occasional busker, but that comes as no surprise and you’d be hard-pressed to find any street-side stall in Java without one.

But as your lips become too numb to say anything and as you become deliriously drenched in sweat, buskers will eventually become the least of your concerns.

Transformed into a mute, all you can do is search for a jug of something cold to bring you back to a state of normalcy. And when that happens, you are left with a full belly and a feeling of having achieved something.