Blowfish Jakarta Nightlife Review

After a few days of meetings, traffic jams and Galaxy Tab misery I decided it was time to blow of some steam and start to get familiar with the Jakarta Nightlife. So far I’ve only been in Loewy’s, Illigals and Stadium (more about Stadium here) so I decided to do some research before hitting the town. After some googling I ended up on a great site from I guess a fellow buleh who seemed to have done a good job in reviewing the hot spots in the Jakarta club scene. I decided to look for a place with some class and where I wouldn’t be bothered by the ‘working’ girls and I decided to head for “Blowfish” which seems to be a bit more exclusive and classy night club.

Jakarta100bars.com description of Blowfish:
Blowfish is one of the most popular club among the Jakarta elite, with Dragonfly and now Immigrant, and a classic of Jakarta’s nightlife. Lots of Chinese people, some expats as well, and many beautiful girls with expensive dresses and perfect hair. It’s glam until 3am, then everybody is drunk.

I arrived at around midnight and first thing that struck me where the three entrances: Members, VIP & guest list and the third “Regular” and though I always like to consider myself as a VVIP I had to settle for regular. Entrance fee is Rp. 150.000 which in my standards is pretty steep even though it included a limited choice beverage.

Blowfish has three areas, one is the main stream party-dance hall which music-wise closely resembles Mbargo and Skygarden in Kuta which means non-pretentious straight forward (but outdated) party music. Then there’s a restaurant area and a dance/house area where the DJ spinned some soulful house tunes. The interior is a mix of classy modern design mixed with lots of chinese elements and I gotta say it looks damn good.

The crowd I would say has an average age between 25-35, 40% (Indo-)Chinese, 45% Indonesians and 15% buleh.

So how to characterize the crowd in one word? RICH & PERFECT! Yep this place has a whole variety of rich people. Here you find all kind of rich people: old-rich, new-rich, my-daddy-is-rich, filthy-rich, I-struck-rich, I-fuck-rich, not so much I-wanna-fuck-rich,  I-am-fucking-rich, fake-it-till-you-make-it-rich, my-boss-pays-for-the-drinks-rich and once-a-month-I-can-pretend-to-be-rich. Yep this place is full of rich peeps that make it a weekly habit to show the other rich peeps they’re still a member of Club Rich.

Perfect because everyone wears the clothes that (should) scream rich. Girls have the perfect hair, perfect make-up, nice shiny accessories (Gucci and D&G rrrrrrule) and all thoughtfully balanced, just perfect, too perfect.

As one that entered through the “regular” entrance I quickly so that being a VIP simply means sitting at one of the respect-my-privacy-cos-I-am-special-tables. Also bottles, you need to open bottles, your table has to have some bottles to make a statement and it’s actually a lot cheaper than just ordering drinks but that’s of course not the point cos you’re rich anyway ya? Though what struck me as weird is that Smirnoff seemed to dominate here while Absolut was available. I mean that’s like flying City link, you save money but you can hardly enjoy the ride and you will surely end up with a terrible headache.

FIREBALLS!. Yep, fireballs are the highlight of the evening and a great way to tell everyone you’re actually a party animal! Fireballs are awesome and  the show around it should get you some attention of the surrounding crowd. What’s a fireball you might ask, well let me explain. There are many varieties for a Fireball but in Blowfish it’s a cocktail glass with Kahlua with on top of the glass a stack of 3 up-side down glasses. Next the waiter has a glass of sambuca which he lights on fire and pours on the top of the glass tower while the guests suck the kahlua that’s now being mixed with burning sambuca, I got to admit it’s a nice spectacle to watch since basically the whole stack of glasses is burning.

In the mean time the party was really heating up… NOT. Despite the pumping beats from guest DJ Bart B-more the place was still dead and it was already 02:00, mind you: on Friday night!. It’s all about being seen but the problem is that because of this actually no one is looking and in the mean time people forget what going to a club should be about: Party! Next stop: Stadium.

Contact details:
Blowfish Jakarta
City Plaza at Wisma Mulia
Jalan Jenderal Gatot Subroto No 42
Jakarta 12710