Being clover of southeast Asian cuisine I was super excited to try the food in North Sumatra. Sadly not only was the trip itself rather disappointing, but the food was frankly awful.
This has actually frankly got me thinking about food in Indonesia in general, which I think might actually be more the problem here, particularly within the context of my trips to other parts of the country.
Dining in Samosir
I’ve already written a little piece on Samosir, but for such a popular place with tourists I was quite taken aback by just how bad the food here was. Much like other parts of Indonesia there are Muslim restaurants everywhere – a fact you learn by the big sign sating “Muslim”. These restaurants specialize in Nasi Goreng (fried rice) and Mie Goreng (fried noodles). Now these are dishes that are famous the world over, but what I keep fining as I travel Indonesia is that the “foreign” version is not really replicated within the country.
Western restaurant wise things did not fare all that much better either with me eating most nights at Tabo Cottages. Now while this was a great hotel with nice rooms and a pool the breakfast was only vaguely passable, while the dinner left a whole heap to be desired. The Nasi Goreng was ok, but the fish and chips I had was one of the worst, if not the worst I have had in many many years. We did not indulge much in the Samosir street food scene, but from a distance it looked mediocre – sarsaparilla not withstanding.
Eating in Medan
Sadly with my flight being late and the tour being such a clusterfuck I did not try all that much food in Medan with it again being linked to street food and eating at the River Deli Hotel.
In fact the street food Medan scene, at least around the hotel was simply a clone of what I have found in other rural Indonesian settings, dominated by the Javanese Muslim majority – something I will deal with in the next section.
Restaurant wise the Hotel River Deli was actually pretty good, with me having a fine Eggs Benedict and would guess it fried noodles. Sadly the same could not be said even when I was at high-end hotels, with the concept of a rare steak being such an issue I decided I’d rather have fried rice on the street.
Javanese imperialism and bad food in Sumatra
And the reason for all this bad food? Sadly it seems to lay in the recent history of Indonesia, which sadly is one of subjugation by the dominant Javanese people. And while this is too short a paragraph to deal with this in full. To summaries though the Javanese have subjugated a whole heap of people, such as in West Papua and Timor-Leste, although the later at least has at least managed to wrestle themselves away.
In Timor-Leste this has dramatically improved the food, particularly Timorese street food, but in West Papua and West Timor for example the food and restaurant trade is not just dominated by cheap Javanese food, but quite literally controlled by it.
This is sadly the same for the food in North Sumatra where there are little to no restaurants done by the local Christian population, with instead restaurants serving nasi goreng that say “Muslim” on them dominate.
The biggest problem though with these fried rice and noodle dishes though is that they taste like bad Chinese food rather than an indigenous Indonesian dish. Again this is made all the more sad by the fact that the country is surrounded by Malaysia, Singapore,. Thailand, China and Vietnam great culinary nations. Amusingly it also borders the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, both of which even manage to leave Indonesian food behind. That surely is the biggest definition of having problems with your food….