Food

Food:
Food is an important social grease here in Indonesia and a big topic of conversation. There is food everywhere. Each meeting supplies a box snack which is pretty substantial. Some sort of dumplings, a sweet, small sandwich, fruit and a water cup. Water cups are ubiquitous and are simply purified water that you don’t open, you push the sharp end of a small straw into the top. In a country with a lot of water, no one can drink it from the tap – and water borne diseases are a real problem in a lot of areas. People really want you to try their food and will take you out and order for you and await a positive answer. We probably aren’t that different – we want people to like our country and our food. The difference probably is that Indonesian has a more diverse and older cultural history and their cuisine is really excellent with a lot of local variations. This isn’t to knock “American” food – but what is best in our food still reflects local, immigrant cultures – which is fine – but Indonesian food (which also reflects Indian, Malaysian, Arabic, Indigenous, etc. ) cultures is older and more settled in some ways.

The food is good and I will eat, and did eat, everything except Ox Tail Soup. I avoided that. More important than the food is the venue. I said above that food is everywhere and it is – hotels, restaurants, small food stalls, and portable carts. Boiled peanuts, boiled eggs, corn, rice, lamb, chicken, fish – it is available all the time in every location. I now know why Indonesian visitors are puzzled by how dead American cities look.

I didn’t really venture to try the portable carts. It is difficult when you really don’t know how to judge either food content or sanitation. I did go with my Pekanbaru contact, Racham, to a food stall for grilled lamb and it was one of the best meals I have had here (and they have all been good). I was served by a woman with an orange New York Yankees hat (note to self, start importing Red Sox hats and expand the nation) who just stared at me. Three teenagers moved to another booth so they could look, and try to figure out just what I was and what I was doing. I did the manly thing and picked up the dinner tab. It was $2.38. If you learned where to eat and shop – which wouldn’t take that long and would involve some errors of judgment for a while – you could live here very cheap by our standards. The hotel I’m writing from (in Pekanbaru, Sumartra) is 57.00 a night and they are running a special “third night free”.