Buying food

I can hear you grumble at me for making you hungry.

All right, so everyone knows and can read wikipedia as well as the numerous "top 100 Indonesian food" lists out there.
But let's be honest: sometimes I sit there thinking, how often do _____ians eat _____? And the comments section will be full of tourists telling them ____ is really great but I never really find out how often Dutch people even touch febo food.

So here I am, giving you a detailed "thing" about Indonesians and food.



Okay so. In Jakarta and its surrounding cities, it's kind of easy to find a variety of food, especially at night. It even gets better during weekends-- lots of people, lots of vendors. These are the times teens and adults roam to find a place to chill out, and these markets are often the destinations.

Of course, those are mostly weekend-only, and barely represents what we eat everyday. But it shows what we mostly buy.

Let's list it. Fried rice, fried noodle, fried shahe fen (kwetiau here), soto of all kinds, kerak telor, rawon, gado-gado, serabi, martabak, bakso, ketoprak, sate (chicken, lamb or beef, usually; variation includes sate Padang), and other things that I can't remember at the moment.

Then there are also normal restaurants that offers a wide, wide variety of food (sometimes all served at the same time, filling the table with plates) and those are normally affordable, too. Of course, there's always those expensive restaurants, but Indonesia also has these run-down restaurants that serves good food but not so good... view. Eating could cost you less than $1 in there, and they're everywhere. (Except for the rich neighbourhoods. Rich neighbourhoods suck.)

What do they serve? Depends on the place, of course, but usually the staple are telur dadar, which is omelette with things like chilli and leek. Tempe and tahu, of course, as well as some thin soup or broth like Sop (meat, chicken, etcetera) or Soto (chicken, Betawi, meat) to be served with the rice.
The one near my house also serves some kind of clam, ready to be eaten with rice, orak arik tempe (cut up tempe fried with chili, sweet soy sauce, garlic and onion) and pare, which is a bitter vegetable that tastes like crap unless you process them right.

And there's always those vendors who pass by houses-- bakso, ketoprak, cendol, which is a sweet drink with some weird things on the bottom. Or even the things they sell in front of schools, like cireng and cilok. They are chewy and savoury snacks made from starch, and due to an explosion of culture, now you are almost guaranteed to see at least a vendor by the gates, waiting for the flood.

How often do we eat them? Depends on the family or individual, of course, but students often buy snacks because they're cheap and delicious. Healthy? I doubt it, but they're tasty. People who don't like cooking might end up buying things from Warteg or Restoran Padang, both of which often have a sizeable variety of food to eat with rice. They're often affordable, ranging from $1 for a whole plate or just for a piece of chicken.

And those markets? Well, it really depends; some office workers might hit those places as they go home, or sometimes teens hang out there, families on nights out too. They're often on the affordable side, too, though most people definitely eat there less due to 1) they're limited to some places, like a parking lot or large empty lots. I never said Indonesians cared about rules. 2) Time restraints; since going there takes time, it's often only done in Friday nights and weekends.

There might be details some of you want, and of course you can ask for them in the comments, but I need to get down writing other things.
Ta-ta~

Images:
http://wisata.kompasiana.com/
http://suarapengusaha.com/
http://kedaiinformasiku.com/
http://stat.ks.kidsklik.com/
http://idaskitchen.blogspot.com
http://dapurmbakasri.blogspot.com
http://ricke-ordinarykitchen.blogspot.com
http://www.ericstone.com
http://wikipedia.org