With a similar flavor profile to Soto Betawi, but a bit more of an adventurous dish, sop kaki kambing is an Indonesian dish for meat lovers, and particularly for goat lovers. Walking into a warung that serves sop kaki kambing, it reminded me a lot of walking into a restaurant in Kenya or Tanzania that serves nyama choma. There were a couple fresh skinned goats hanging from a rafter of the tent, and little by little, the meat was sliced up, cooked, and then displayed at the front of the restaurant. Local Indonesian styles of eating vary, but eating with your hands is commonplace, as it is in many places in India. You may see a small bowl with water at the table for washing your right hand which is the polite hand to eat with. If there isn’t an option at the table, look around because you will often find a washroom or sink close by. If I understand correctly, nasi campur is the general term used to describe these types of rice meals in Indonesia. There exist regional sub-varieties that can have specific components and go by a different name – like nasi padang from West Sumatra, nasi rames from Java, and nasi ingkung from Yogyakarta– but they can all be considered nasi campur.

Lara Lee is an Indonesian and Australian chef and food writer. She trained at Leiths School of Food and Wine and now runs an event catering business called Kiwi and Roo. Tumpeng is an important dish in Indonesian culture because it’s regarded as a symbol of gratitude, a dish that’s often enjoyed to celebrate important events like festivals and birthdays. The cone-shaped rice is meant to symbolize the holy mountain while the many side dishes surrounding it carry meaning as well. In any case, the babi guling below was from Ibu Oka in Ubud, the warung made famous by Anthony Bourdain and No Reservations. It’s pretty good though definitely not the best babi guling in Bali. 24. Mie GorengIf you love fish, fried fish in Indonesia, eaten along with rice and sambal, makes an absolutely delicious meal, or accompaniment to a full seafood meal.

Manado foods has extraordinary spiciness and powerfull flavour because the amount of spices that sometimes takes more than a half of the whole dish ingredients. You can’t eat those without sweating, just feels like free sauna, even rica-rica should be super spicy because “rica” it self means “chili”, so if rica-rica tastes a bit sweet, thats not the authentic one, maybe thats an adaptive version because most indonesian people can’t handle the real spiciness level. once I eat spicy foods there, other region’s spicy food spiciness tastes just so so. Most(almost all) people in north sulawesi can’t eat without clili, a local proverb says “if our eye(s) touch by chili, we don’t cry but eating without chili can make us cry”.You’ll find sambal on the table of just about every restaurant in Indonesia you eat at, and if they don’t have any available, if you ask for some, they will make a simple sambal as soon as you ask. To me, sambal is something I look forward to consuming with every Indonesian meal. And it’s not only because I’m a chili lover, but also because I think the diversity and variations of different sambals is a reflection of just how diverse Indonesia and its food are. What I love so much about Indonesian food are the fresh and vibrant ingredients that go into the cooking – the chilies, garlic, shallots, lemongrass, lemon basil – and the list goes on. The combinations of these ingredients is what makes Indonesian cuisine so spectacular. The catfish are prepared pretty simple, just salted and sometimes rubbed with some coriander and turmeric, and then deep fried until extra crispy all the way through. The catfish I ate in Indonesia were pretty small, about the size of a sausage, so when they were deep fried they almost turned chip-like, fried solidly. Like a few of the dishes on this list, sambal exists in many forms. There are an estimated 200-300 variations of sambal in Indonesia, most of them originating from Java. Depending on where it’s from, sambal can vary in heat level from being intensely hot to mildly spicy to spicy and sweet. 26. Kecap Manis Hi Mark, I am an instant fan of you. Soonest I saw one of your Video Blog in Youtube (saw it in my friends Facebook wall) I was instantly hooked up (not just because you are in Jakarta currently).