More than just satay: Indonesian food and its common misconceptions

Despite the growing acceptance of Asian culture, Indonesian cuisine is still overlooked and misrepresented in the UK food scene. 

It’s not hard finding a place to eat around London. It is a melting pot of cultures and cuisines, filled with exotic ingredients and aromatic spices. For many foreigners, these food joints serving their home cuisine can heal a bad case of homesickness, which is especially needed for the chilly UK winters. 

Many Asian students, like me, dread the lost access of good food from home when arriving in the UK. But walking through the many boroughs of London, there are lively Asian diaspora communities that have cemented their place in the city as a home away from home. From the floating red lanterns strewn across Chinatown near Leicester Square to the Asian food halls, it isn’t difficult to adapt to life in the big, scary city.  

But continue your journey through central London to the business districts, where glass skyscrapers glitter in the sky and people run about in monochrome office attire. There are branches selling inexpensive Asian food right by the nearest Pret, serving takeaway dishes of Asian food remodeled to be “healthier” (as if it wasn’t to begin with). A word to describe these pan-Asian food branches is inauthentic. You’ll find Korean fried chicken in a Japanese fast-food chain, or Indonesian satay skewers on a Thai restaurant menu. 

Ryan and Della, 22 and 20, have been on the hunt for good Indonesian food for the three years they’ve been in London. Growing up with Balinese heritage, authentic Indonesian food (let alone authentic Balinese food) is hard to come by.  

“We can’t find island-specific cuisine [in London], just general Indonesian food that you can find similarities of in other countries.” Ryan concludes, after the two chattered to me about which restaurant had the spiciest sambal (chilli paste), who made the tastiest rendang (beef coconut stew), and which places I should avoid taking non-Indonesian friends for a meal. 

Considering Indonesia’s archipelago making up over 17,000 islands, it’s no surprise that Indonesian food can’t be represented with a single dish. And with that one dish, there are over hundreds of different ways to make it. Take satay, a token dish recognised by the whole world. According to Rahel Stephanie, founder of supper club Spoons, there are up to 252 ways to cook satay. Unfortunately, this has led to inauthentic sate dishes around the city.  

“You’ll find satay rice boxes’, satay sauces’ and satay salads’ – all with no skewer in sight,” Stephanie says in an interview with Delicious Magazine. 

As an Indonesian, our representation is near nonexistent. Of course, you have the hidden gems in the form of delivery services, pop-ups and a few restaurants, but our national dishes are barely talked about in the UK. Even as the Indonesian community in London is slowly growing, there are still instances where restaurants are strictly Indo-Chinese-Malay fusion foods. Despite the almost identical national language of Indonesian and Malay and recurring ingredients found in each cuisine, each nation is special in its own way. It should not be mixed together into a few watered-down dishes that barely hold their original flavours. 

Underrepresented and criminally underrated 

Regarding Asian food in London, Ryan and Della think that Chinese and Japanese are among the most popular Asian cuisine in the city, listing out a plethora of dishes like dim sum or sushi. For Indonesian food, they weren’t as enthusiastic and had to ponder, before finally answering: “It’s still very secluded, I don’t feel like everyone might know [about Indonesian food],” Della answers.  

Ryan tells me; “The Indonesian dishes here are quite Westernised and elevated in the sense that [in the UK] it’s a sit-down, semi-formal contemporary dining restaurant,” rather than the family-owned roadside stalls in Indonesia known as a warung, he adds. These stalls back home serve the same food as these restaurants, but in Indonesia they are simply known as street food. 

But maybe a restaurant setting is the best way to introduce new, unfamiliar cuisine for people in Britain. Somewhere in St. James there is Toba, a restaurant that has been talk of the town for the past few months among the Indonesian community. The restaurant is owned by Pino Edward Sinaga, known for his Camden market stall Pino’s Warung, which has been operating for about four years.  

When asked about the popularity of Indonesian food in the UK, Sinaga implies there is still a long way to go. He elaborates that one of his biggest obstacles of running food outlets is sourcing the ingredients. “We get most of our spices imported from the Netherlands, where the Indonesian community is more prominent.” he says. 

But after the restaurant’s opening earlier this year, Toba has been buzzing with an onslaught of reservations, positive reviews, including one from The Guardian, and most importantly a lasting impression on non-Indonesians who have never delved into Indonesian food past satay with peanut sauce. To add, Sinaga says that 60% of his restaurant customers are non-Indonesian. 

The restaurant menu consists of familiar food for non-Indonesians and newer dishes that are reminiscent of Sinaga’s own personal upbringing. Among the menu items, ikan arsik is one of Toba’s bestselling items, according to Sinaga.  

“It’s fillet of cod, cooked Bataknese style, which is where I’m originally from. It’s a recipe from my beloved late mother.” he explains.  

Sinaga says that his restaurant and his stall have stark differences in the demographic of customers. Unlike his restaurant, 60% of the people coming to his stall are Indonesian, and unlike Toba’s menu, Pino’s Warung sells comforting street food. Sinaga tells me that his bestselling dishes in Pino’s Warung are nasi padang, a flavourful rice dish originating from west Sumatra, and sate ayam, or grilled chicken skewers.  

Unlike the elegant interiors of the restaurant and the smartly dressed staff, Pino’s Warung is laid-back and tucked away from the chaos of Camden. Among the plethora of Indo-fusion foods around the city, Pino’s Warung is one of the few authentic Indonesian food spots in London.  

Misrepresentations and appropriation 

When Garnetta, 23, set out on a quest to find ingredients for her pandan cake, she noticed the lack of Southeast Asian groceries in her East London neighbourhood.  

“I guess the lack of being able to find spices doesn’t allow me to make great Asian food here,” she says. Having been in London for the past five years, Garnetta has seen the surplus of pan-Asian restaurants and the lack of Asian herbs and spices in supermarkets.  

Growing up as a Chinese-Indonesian, she spent most of her upbringing eating fusion foods. Garnetta explains the slight difference with the sweet soy sauce flavour found in Indonesian fried rice to Chinese-Indonesian fried rice, which is saltier and cooked with oyster sauce and Chinese sausages.  

“I feel like this wouldn’t be found in China, because this is already fusion food back home that I’ve been cooking all my life.” she says.  

Despite the scarcity of Indonesian cuisine in the UK, it is still not safe from the generalisations done by non-Indonesians. During a busy outing in London, Garnetta once spotted a trendy food stall serving “Bali bowls”. The dish in question was a green salad with chickpeas and soy, and she says it was borderline offensive to Balinese culture and their food.  

“People are not educated enough with the food that they cook and sell. And it’s just rude and frustrating, because food is such a big part of culture.” Garnetta says. 

Of course, reinvented or reconstructed dishes are not always a bad thing, as long as the cuisine’s history and flavours are taken into consideration. In Rahel Stephanie’s supper club Spoons, she serves reinterpretations of traditional Indonesian dishes to make them plant based while maintaining its authentic flavour. With her platform, she is promoting Indonesian culture in British television appearances, while sharing her vegan-friendly recipes to news outlets like The Guardian.  

Given Indonesia’s meat-heavy dishes, Stephanie often recreates these foods with a plant-based version of them. She says in an interview with Delicious Magazine, “what frustrates and angers me is the appropriation of foods without attention given to the cultural and historical contexts. It’s so disrespectful to centuries of tradition and will eventually lead to their erasure.”  

Garnetta also notices this in Chinese takeaways in the UK, where these reinvented dishes are associated with added stereotypes from the west. She explains using words she has heard from her peers, who have categorised Chinese takeaways as greasy and unhealthy, or a good hangover food. She says, “Asian restaurants try to cater towards a Western foreign palate, but by doing that they have to sacrifice taste. It’s like a vicious cycle.” 

When questioned about where she enjoys going to for Indonesian food in London, Garnetta merely shrugged. She says the food recreated here does not hit the same way as it would back home. 

Spreading culture and cuisine 

Now, in an age where people seek authenticity in different cultures and where Asian cuisines are slowly being appreciated in the west, perhaps Indonesian cuisine and the culture will be recognised in due time.  

Nestled within the Queensway food market sits a small red café, named Triple Hot Spicy Café. Inside are posters of Indonesian desserts, including the café’s menu of rice dishes and soups. By the kitchen is an array of imported goods you won’t find in London’s supermarkets. The tables in the café are usually occupied by families, indulging in the café’s specialty dish, bakso, a meatball soup paired with noodles and leafy greens. There are bottles of sambal and sweet soy sauce on the table for customers to make their own bakso concoction, all according to personal preferences. 

Running this café is Zukni Legowo, who has been living and raising his family in the UK for the last 25 years. Hopping from Manchester to Ireland, he has spent the last 10 years providing bakso in food bazaars and delivery services before setting up shop in London, where he opened Triple Hot Spicy Café. 

“I opened the café two years ago, during the pandemic. I took a risk despite the situation [back then], where I watched smaller businesses shut down.” he told me. Now, Legowo proudly expresses the success of the café, recently opening new branches in Kilburn and Bicester village. “It has been growing slowly, because right now the UK is going through an economic recession.” He explains, although he is optimistic about the cafes and their development in the future. 

Just like the small community of Indonesian restauranteurs in the UK, Legowo is rooting for the growing popularity of Indonesian food and culture in the west. He says he wants to serve the most authentic version of Indonesian food to introduce to people in the UK. 

“Indonesia’s culinary landscape is still behind in the UK, compared to our neighbouring countries like Malaysia, Thailand, or Vietnam.” he says. “In my opinion, Indonesian cuisine has so many flavours and variations, and it’s something I want to show to people overseas.” 

Unsurprisingly, most of his customers are Indonesians, but Legowo says there have been more non-Indonesians stopping by. Recently there have been more Southeast Asians, like Malaysian and Indian, with Legowo explaining that they usually enjoy the food as much as his usual Indonesian customers do.  

“We want to use food as a way to introduce the general public of the UK to Indonesian culture” Legowo explains. He tells me to do this we must not sacrifice taste and follow authentic recipes that we make back home. 

With the growth in the Indonesian community in the UK, Legowo is optimistic about the west’s growing recognition of our culture.  

He says, “I hope that in the future, our Indonesian customers can recommend Indonesian food to their friends, and in 5-10 years ahead, I hope the awareness of Indonesian food in England is more widely known.” 

Feature image by Anggi Pande.