I haven’t written about Indonesia because, to put it bluntly, it hasn’t given me much to write about. That’s only partially Indonesia’s fault, at least directly. The rest of it is, depending on how you look at it, either not Indonesia’s fault or Indonesia’s fault only indirectly for making me too sick to either be able to eat or care about eating once I was technically able to.
Not to heap more jabs upon Indonesia, but I’m happy to have gotten sick here instead of a country whose food I was more excited about eating.
I went to Yogyakarta for deep-seated reasons that traced all the way back to 2007. When I lived in Papua, I was offered the chance to travel to Yogyakarta to see Borobudur, Prambanan, and all the rest of it, and declined because I thought it would be too expensive. Instead, I spent my winter holiday steaming (and getting food poisoning, too, actually) on Biak, where my then-boyfriend and I got chased out of several hotels for not being married. And then the one that we made it into had doors that only locked from the outside. Creepy!
Anyway, this is all a very long way of saying that I didn’t go to Yogyakarta for the food; I went there to fulfill a 10-year-old regret, and as far as that went: success! The temples were beautiful and unique. As far as the food: research before arriving taught me that food in Yogyakarta is known even among Indonesians for being very sweet. I have trouble with sweetness even when no one else does, so that didn’t bode well.
I will say that, despite (or perhaps because of?) the torrential sugar downpours on all of its food, Yogyakarta is the cheapest place I’ve ever eaten, with no meal ever costing more than $2.50 and most costing under $1. Once I got used to what was likely and not likely to be encrusted with sugar (and what I would and would not tolerate as far as that went) I had some decent meals.
There was the ever-present lele, or small catfish, grilled or fried and served with a square of tempeh, a bowl of white rice, cucumbers, and sambal. The best version was at Waroeng Wiratama Spesial Ikan Bakar, whose sambal was brown, savory, and fiery, not sweet at all.
There was gudeg, an unripe jackfruit curry with loads of spices on paper, but mainly candlenut and palm sugar on the tongue. I had it at Yu Djum, which was the place unanimously recommended to me by everyone on the street and every rating on the internet.
I’ll admit that Indonesia has great soto ayam (chicken soup) although after it being the only thing I could stomach for a week, I never want to eat it again. At its crunchy-garlicky, liver-containing, clean-silky-spinach floating, comfort-food best, it was served outside Borobudur Temple next to a shuttle bus stop.
There was a street stall setting rujak es krim, which consists of several things I don’t like placed together to make something delicious and very refreshing on a hot day. The first component is a pinkish gummy ice cream reminiscent of nail polish remover. The second is copious amounts of sugar syrup. And the third is fruits and vegetables totally inappropriate for sugar syrup being rolled in that sugar syrup: mainly cucumber, green papaya, and mango. But put them together in a bowl and it was almost the best thing I ate in Yogyakarta.
Ubud, Bali, promised to be better, but promptly gave me food poisoning a day after I set foot in it, probably because I stooped to the level of having an avocado salad and a multi-veggie juice at a Western-tourist-oriented place with no other customers – or perhaps because I went to a rib joint and ordered vegetables in bean sauce. In any case, it was a number of days before I could venture out and sample Ubud’s crunchy-granola hippie food. A few eggplant-nori wraps, avocado-seed shakes, pumpkin soups, pistachio gelatos, and kale quinoa breakfast bowls later, I had found my way back to being able to order and digest a wickedly wonderful plate of nasi goreng babi from Warung Makan Bu Rus.
If you’ve spent any time in Indonesia, you know that nasi goreng can either be a feast or a throwaway food that someone mushed together from rice, MSG, and old vegetable trimmings in a wok in his backyard. I’ve had almost exclusively the latter, and after being burned several times, I stopped ordering it somewhere in late 2006.
This nasi goreng was not that. Each vegetable was crisp and accented against the backdrop of the sweet, slick, and savory rice that tasted too of toasted coconut. But the vegetables faded into the background once one of the two precious sticks of pork satay had been tasted, and the rest of the meal planned around how best to maximize the bites so they’d be evenly spread out until the plate was gone. The pork pieces alternated firm (but not chewy) and fatty (but melty rather than gummy) and had a barbecue-flavored glaze that, yes, was definitely palm-sugar based, but allowed the sugar to stay in the background of the smoke.
I’m hoping this meal was a turning point, and that I’ll be able to sample some more particularly Balinese meals like babi guling, bebek betutu, and lawar, not to mention some fresh seafood in the south, near Uluwatu, where I’m going next, but I’ll have to wait for the Galungan holiday to be over before the more traditional places open up again. Until then, it’s back to crunchy hippie food for me, and there are definitely worse fates than that.
