Rice! And noodles! Either fried, or boiled and eaten with some dishes on the side for flavour. Nasi goreng (fried rice) is a national dish, and my usual lunch.
Some dishes I particularly like, and that are particularly Indonesian are tempe, and gado-gado. Similar to tofu, tempe is made from soy beans. Whereas tofu uses the milk, and has a slightly slimy unpleasant texture, tempe is made from the beans themselves, and has a much more pleasing meatier texture.
Gado-gado is the national salad. A mixture of whatever comes to hand, it normally features beans, tofu and/or tempe, lonton (rice steamed in banana leaves until its solid), bean sprouts, an egg and krupuk (prawn crackers). It is dressed with a spicy peanut sauce. This sort of sauce is found everywhere in Indonesia food; you can have it with fresh fruit (when it is called rujak), or maybe with some deep fried catfish (when it is called pecel lele). A famous example would be sate, marinated meat (chicken or goat usually) grilled on coconut husks and then served with spicy peanut sauce.
Jakarta has an admirable selection of places to eat. They cater for almost any budget, and can be found in almost any location. I would say any budget, but I don’t think our office boys (probably the lowest strata in employment) can afford to eat there too often, instead contenting themselves with IndoMie, the local instant noodles. These are cheap, and despite some far fetched scare stories perpetuated by various bule about them causing cancer, are actually really nice - several cuts above likes of Supernoodles.
The cheapest food outlets I am referring to are known as Kaki Lima (5 legs). They are one or two person stalls on wheels that get pushed from point to point, selling their wares. They normally consist of a wok, a burner and gas canister, a bit of storage, and probably an umbrella to keep the sun and rain off. The five legs refer to the two legs of the pusher, the two wheels and the stand. They provide quick and cheap meals (from about 40p) of reasonable quality. Each kaki lima only sells one product and sometimes the quality will be better than you find in some restaurants, but I concede this may be due to familiarity and a personal fondness for nasi goring and deep fried tempe.
Kaki limas are found everywhere. If there is an unoccupied pavement space, there will be a kaki lima. If they discover a handily placed block over an otherwise open sewer they will have set up next to it, and the customers will be sitting on the block eating their lunch. Each type of kaki lima makes a distinctive sound, which they sound as they move to attract custom, much like an ice cream vans tune in the uk. Useful you may think, until they decide to sell their bakso (meatball soup) at 6am outside your house. And your house is on a dead end street, so you know that even if you quickly get back to sleep, you are going to be woken up again in 5 minutes.
A step up from the kaki limas are the warungs; essentially the same thing, but a bit bigger and with a fixed location. They sell the same sort of thing, at the same sort of quality, for a slightly higher price.
A step up again are the places selling regional Indonesian food. The main types near me (and throughout Jakarta as far as I can tell) are Javanese (from Java), Padang (from Sumatra) and Sundanese (also from Java). These are apparently entirely separate cuisines, although I currently have difficulty telling them apart. It’s certainly true that the Javanese places don’t sell beef rendang, and are a bit cheaper (rice and 3 different dishes can cost from 50p up to about £1), but at the moment the subtleties are lost on me.
Telling Indonesia people that I like nasi padang has become one of my favourite pastimes; there is sharp intake of breath, a short and loaded silence and then a load exclamation. Their reaction seems to encompass surprise that I have heard of it at all (strange since places selling it are everywhere), surprise that I’ve tried it (they are admittedly funny looking places), surprise that I find it tasty (I can’t understand why, it is really is good), but mostly surprise that I can tolerate the heat. I suppose I’ve acclimatised to the heat of the food now, but nasi padang seems no hotter than any of the other food. That said, I do use the sambal sparingly, as they can be murderously hot.
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