Indonesia Street Food

Thousands of islands, thousands of variations on the same street-food idea.

🚶 Some vendors carry their entire kitchen on a shoulder pole and walk the same route every night.

5 street food dishes from Indonesia — what each one is, why it's made that way, and what to expect when you order it.

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Signature street foods of Indonesia

Green Jelly Noodles · Iced Coconut Dessert Drink Es Cendol Its green color and shape traditionally come from pandan-flavored rice flour jelly pressed through a strainer into worm-like noodles, not food dye. Es cendol layers pandan-green jelly noodles, coconut milk, shaved ice, and dark palm sugar syrup into a glass, eaten with a spoon as much as sipped. It's sold from carts and bicycle…

Sate (Skewered Grilled Meat)

Main · Grilled Sate (Skewered Grilled Meat) The peanut sauce is often considered more important than the meat itself. Skewered, grilled meat served with a rich peanut sauce, sold from mobile carts or shoulder-pole vendors who fan the charcoal by hand as they walk their route.

Gado-Gado (Vegetable Salad with Peanut Sauce)

Main · Assembled Gado-Gado (Vegetable Salad with Peanut Sauce) A "salad" that's actually a rich, warm-sauced dish, not a cold side. Blanched vegetables, tofu, and boiled egg tossed in a thick, spiced peanut sauce — a full meal despite looking like a side dish.

Soup · Chinese-Indonesian Classic Bakso Barack Obama has named bakso one of his favorite dishes from his childhood years in Jakarta. Dense meatballs — usually beef, bound with tapioca flour for a springy, firm bite — are served in a clear broth with noodles, tofu, bean sprouts and fried shallots. Sold from pushcarts and…

Street Griddle · Stuffed Pancake Martabak "Martabak" is really two unrelated dishes sharing one name — a savory egg-and-meat-stuffed pastry, and an entirely different thick, spongy sweet… For the savory version (martabak telur), a thin dough is stuffed with spiced minced meat, egg, and scallions, folded into a square, and fried crisp on a flat griddle, then sliced and…

More street food in Asia

Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Photo credits.