Generally there are two main kinds of meals in Indonesia. The first is simple everyday food for unpretentious locals. The other is beautifully served restaurant food for those with more money. We rarely visit expensive restaurants we’re not so familiar with their food. But we learnt a lot about simple local cuisine during our half-year travel in Indonesia. The first impression of the food on this largest archipelago in the world wasn’t that good. Sumatran food which we encountered first didn’t seem to be the best. But later we realized that the quality in Indonesia very much depended on the place we chose. This article highlights the best indonesian food and we’ll also share our ideas how to find good place to eat everywhere in the country.
Note: all described below is just our own experience. I’m not the author of an encyclopedia and our advice mostly concerns vegetarian food as we try avoid eating meat unless absolutely necessary.
The Cuisine in General
- Indonesians eat lots of rice. Almost every eating is accompanied with it. They usually eat plain steamed white rice without salt or butter.
- Some food could be spicy but not too much. Sometimes cooks add chilli pepper or hot sauce on the final stage of cooking or even when the meal is ready. If you don’t like spicy food keep an eye on the cook’s performance.
- Locals are fond of sugar. Lots of sugar. Sweet tea is more like syrup. Same with coffee.
- In a number of eateries cooks are not brilliant. Eateries which serve really finger licking food are also very much widespread.
- Things changes from one region to another. This is not a surprise if you look on the size of the country.
- Vegetarian options are limited but usually you can find something.
- Buying milk is a problem in Indonesia. Cans of sweetened condensed milk are available everywhere even in villages but fresh milk can only be found in supermarkets in large cities. Long-life milk in carton is much more common than fresh.
- Indonesia is heaven of tropical fruits. This country has the most wide variety of fruits we have ever seen.
The Meals
Fried rice (ind: nasi goreng) and fried noodles (ind: mie goreng) are the common food in Indonesia. Both are cooked with finely chopped green leaves and sometimes chicken. Nasi goreng is often accompanied by scrambled eggs (fried on both sides) and chips made from starch and fish or shrimp (ind: krupuk). ‘Bihun goreng’ is a kind of fried noodles, in fact it is rice vermicelli. The potential sources of annoyance are: much spices, too much cooking oil, and they often use fast-cooking noodles that are not especially tasty. Soy sauce is nice dressing to both meals. Price: from 0,6 USD.
‘Nasi campur’ (spells like ‘nasi champur’) is also among the most popular meals. If you have just found small eatery in the very remote village you for sure would eat ‘nasi campur’. Literally ‘campur’ means mixture. It means that owners of an eatery have rice cooker with warm rice inside and a number of dishes you can choose. Fried chicken, eggs, fish, fried vegetables, fried beans, fried noodles (local strangely add them to rice) are common. A vendor will first place a large portion of rice and then add a bit of vegetables, chicken and so on. In my experience ‘nasi campur’ is often unsavory. Price: from 1 USD.
‘Gado-gado’ is vegetable salad with peanut sauce. Vegetables are fried or boiled in advance (and served chilled or room temperature). Gado-gado often contains tofu or eggs, sometimes rice is added. It’s a good choice. Sauce is especially tasty but the meal is small to be a main dish. Price: from 0,3 USD.
‘Capcay’ (sounds like chapchay) is a little bit boiled and lightly fried vegetables. Tasty and not spicy. Price: from 0,3 USD.
‘Sate’ is grilled or barbecued sliced meat served with sauce. One portion is quite small. No idea about price.
‘Lalapan’ is fried chicken leg. Approximate price: 1 USD.
‘Ikan bakar’ is grilled fish. We have’t tried it but looks appetizing.
‘Soto ayam’ is chicken soup. It’s quite thick and contains a lot of fat, but not spicy. Usually it’s served along with bowl of plain rice but you can order without rice (tell ‘tanpa nasi’). Price: from 0,3 USD.
‘Bakso’ is a soup with rice vermicelli and meat balls. Locals add ketchup, sambal (extremely spicy sauce) and sweet soy sauce to bakso but everyone do it on his own (so that is easy to avoid spicy ingredients). If you buy bakso from travelling street vendors ask them not to put spicy components inside. Bakso is nice dietary choice (neither spicy nor fatty). But note that (in my opinion) bakso from street vendors is much lower in quality that from eateries. You can recognize good bakso place if it is a permanent cafe which serves only bakso or another kind of soup for example soto ayam, all the more so if the cafe serves several kind of bakso. Usually there is a choice of ‘bakso telur’ (with egg) and ‘bakso urat’ (with pieces of meat and fat). Price: 0,5 USD.
A moving bakso stall. Meatballs and fried tofu on the upper shelf and white noodles on the down are the components of bakso. Yellow noodles is the ingredient of ‘mie ayam’.
Bakso is served
‘Mie ayam’ is a soup with egg noodles, sliced fried chicken and a bit of greenery. There are more noodles in mie ayam than in bakso. I like this soup. Once we saw combined soup named ‘mie ayam bakso’, practically it was mie ayam with added meatballs. Price: 0,5 USD.
‘Masakan Padang’ is not a meal. It’s a cuisine of Minangkabau people of Sumatra island (with the center in Padang town). ‘Masakan’ is ‘cuisine’ in Indonesian. It’s widely spread in all Indonesia and delicious. The way of selling is a bit like nasi campur. Plates with dishes (meat, fish, vegetables, eggs, tofu) are usually put behind a big glass window. Customers make a choice and waiter serves it immediately directly to the table (without heating). The only hot dish in Padang restaurant is rice. I don’t know why but on the top of the window which is visible from the street deep fried dishes are usually displayed (they look like mummies of pharaohs). But we found that inside a restaurant on the bottom of a window there are pans with mouth watering jackfruit and other vegetable curry and braised fish (ind: ikan gulai). Another outstanding specialities are braised tofu and braised eggplant. Sambal is ubiquitous in Indonesia and vendor will try to add a spoon of this spicy sauce to your plate. The best way to find Padang restaurant is to look for ‘masakan padang’ sign. By the way, Padang places are usually very clean and nice to eat in. The price depends on the number of dishes and of course meat more expensive than vegetables. Rice with a piece of fish with two types of vegetables and with a fish sauce costs from 0,9 USD. On Sumatra the serving style differs. Just after the customer sat all dishes appears on the table, you can take what you want and pay for the items you took. If you have eaten one piece of meat you pay just for one piece. But if you have eaten a part of salad portion you should pay for the whole one. The same applies for ‘masakan Jawa’ (javanese cuisine), its feature are lots of not spicy braised vegetables. Sometimes masakan Jawa and masakan Padang are combined in one eatery.
Masakan Padang from the outside
and inside
‘Bubur ayam’ is a porridge with a bit of chicken. We haven’t tried it.
‘Martabak’ is thick nourishing egg pancake. It can be plain but often with condensed milk. Non-sweet martabaks are also available. Price: from 1 USD.
Martabak with chocolate crumb filling
‘Gorengan’ are deep fried pieces of bananas, tofu, potatoes, eggplants and all that you can imagine. Bananas, tofu and tempeh (traditional soy product) are the most popular. Price for one piece: 0,05 USD.
Fried bananas. But usually bananas aren’t cut.
Drinks
Indonesian tea is disgusting. To be honest this is not tea at all, it is sawdust. Probably that is the reason why indonesians add so much sugar to their cups of tea. Sweetened tea is called ‘teh manis’. ‘Teh susu’ indicates fourth part of sweet condensed milk in a cup (too sweet!). Tea with eggs (teh telur) is like a dessert and delicious.
In hot places (i.e. almost everywhere) ‘es jeruk’ is served. It’s water with fresh mandarin squeeze, ice and sugar.
Fresh juices are must-try in Indonesia. They are cheap and tasty. Usually it’s not really juice but shake with ice and sugar syrup. Avocado shake with ice and sweet condensed milk is unexpectedly delicious. It’s more like sweet mousse. Avocado shake is 0,5 USD.
Avocado fresh
‘Es campur’ is my favorite fruit dessert. It’s a mixture of crumbled ice (or big slow-melting ice cubes in bad places) and several kinds of jelly balls all different in taste and texture. The other ingredients are sugar syrup, sweet condensed milk and sometimes fruits. ‘Es campur’ with fruits is called ‘es campur buah’ but sometimes vendor will add fruits to ordinary ‘es campur’. Two best es campurs in Indonesia are 1) on Sukawati night market, Bali and 2) in Arema Raya restaurant in Sumbawa Besar on Sumbawa (jalan Kartini, 81). ‘Es buah’ means that there is more fruit or only fruits, without jelly.
Es campur
Three Rules How to Choose an Eatery
1. Permanent eateries are better than moving street vendors.
2. Good eatery is specialized in one main dish or one cuisine. For example, ‘bakso + mie ayam’ or ‘masakan Padang’ or ‘mie goreng + nasi goreng’ or ‘nasi campur’.
3. If the eatery is empty and the kitchen is virgin find another place for a lunch. The more local customers inside, the better.
Food Vocabulary
food – makanan
drinks – minuman
spoon – sendok
fork – garpu
tea – teh
sweet – manis
water – air
hot – panas
cold – dingin
ice – es
fresh – segar
half – setengah
soup – soup, soto
rice – nasi, plain rice – nasi putih
bread – roti
noodles – mie
salt – garam
sugar – gula
fish – ikan
meat – daging
pork – babi
beef – sapi
chicken – ayam
tofu – tahu
banana – pisang
milk – susu, sweet condensed milk – susu kental manis
vegetable – sayur
fruit – buah
sweet soy sauce – kecap manis
ketchup – saus tomat
fried – goreng
grilled – bakar
boiled – rebus
chilli sauce – sambal, if you don’t want it just say ‘tanpa sambal’
spicy – pedas
eat here – makan di sini
take away – di bungkus
thank you – terima kasih
Words can be easily combined. For example, ‘mie goreng ayam’ means ‘fried noodles with chicken’, ‘teh susu’ is tea with milk, ‘pisang goreng’ is fried banana.
Enjoy your food in Indonesia!