Indonesia is street snacks paradise. However, you can’t really name every delicious street snack in the country, even though most of the traditional snacks are showcased at the street vendors. This top-10 list will help you find your favorites!
- Kue Pukis (Pukis Cakes)
One of soft Indonesian traditional cakes with various sweet toppings, from raisins, cheese, or chocolate sprinkle. Sometimes Indonesians improve Kue Pukis by serving it with fillings such as pineapple or blueberry jams. Like most other cakes, Pukis Cake is made by mixing bread flour, sugar, egg, coconut milk, and yeast.
- Kerak Telor (Egg Crust / Crusted Rice Pancake)
The vendors of Kerak Telor are mainly found in Jakarta, since this street snack itself comes from the city and is considered the most iconic Betawinese (native Jakartans) traditional snack. The main ingredients of Kerak Telor are eggs and sticky rice, and usually you can adjust the level of spiciness when ordering.
- Tahu Gejrot
This tofu-based street snack is quite simple in term of its appearance and the process of making it does not require much effort, but the taste is so intense!
Originated from West Java, Tahu Gejrot is now almost everywhere in Indonesia, especially throughout the Java island.
You just need to cut some deep-fried tofu into pieces, pour them with chilly soy sauce and let the tofu fully absorb it.
While making Tahu Gejrot, there is no exact rule about the spiciness level. After all, the sauce is not solely made of chilly and soy sauce. Indonesians love to mix them with tamarind, garlic, and sweet soy sauce as well—complex ingredients for a simple dish!
- Es Podeng (Iced Pudding Cocktail)
Nothing beats Indonesian iced beverages! Given the tropical climate, Indonesians need refreshing treats to cool down a bit. On this top 10 lists, you can find several Indonesian iced beverages picks to choose from with a vast array of different ingredients.
Often served in a bowl, Es Podeng consists of small pieces of pudding or agar-agar, coconut ice cream sundae, tapioca pearls, diced bread or croutons, chocolate sauce or condensed milk, fresh avocado and topped them all with roasted peanut and chocolate sprinkle. To experience a hotchpotch of tastes, some vendors also provide jackfruit and fermented tapioca on it.
- Serabi (Indonesian Pancakes)
I know you can easily recognize the taste and texture of common pancakes, but to have it a bit more coconutywith a coarse textureis not regrettable after all! One enjoyable thing you will encounter when eating Serabi is the strong pandan aroma, but it has coconut cake flavor once you chew it. You can taste on its own or with sugar palm syrup. Today you can add your preferred toppings on it too, such as chocolate sprinkle or shredded cheese.
- Es Campur (Sweet Mixed Shaved Ice with Assorted Toppings)
Es Campur itself literally means Mixed Ice and is an Indonesian popular dessert treat. As the name tells us, you can mix a little bit of everything (mostly fruits and jellies) in a bowl, and sitting them all on shaved ice. When you have a bowl of Es Campur as your dessert, you can experience many ways to enjoy jelly; first, the normal Es Campur includes little cubes of grass jelly. Second, if you wonder what makes it colorful—most likely with pinkish shade, you may probably have sago jellies in it, and there comes cengkaleng which is the coconut-based jellies. We believe that small things brought together have a big impact, so do these jellies. Due to the different levels of sweetness, they can balance the sour tastes produced by the fruits. Definitely the best dessert to end your savory dishes!
- Kue Lekker (Mini Crepes)
Indonesia has a thing for cookie dough. We make sweet dishes out of it with various styles to choose from and Kue Lekker is one of them. Kue Lekker is a crispy folded crepe with chocolate condensed milk, sprinkles, and small slices of bananas plopped into it and made with a spinning flat pan—just like normal crepes! The name ‘Lekker’ comes from Dutch that is defined as ‘tasty’ or ‘good’.
- Siomay and Batagor (Steamed Dumplings and Deep-fried Dumplings)
‘Twins with a slightly different character’ is the best way to illustrate Siomay and Batagor. Arguably regarded as Indo-Chinese street snacks, both come in a form of dumplings with peanut sauce. The popularity of Siomay and Batagor is ubiquitous as you may locate them everywhere in Indonesia from the street food vendors, wedding food stations, until 5-star hotels. Although their serving methods are quite identical, what separates Siomay from Batagor is the way they are processed. Batagor is actually the fried version of Siomay and the taste has been adjusted to Sundanese cuisine.
- Martabak Manis & Martabak Asin (Sweet Martabak & Savory Martabak)
Who doesn’t know this thick Indonesian pancake called Martabak, since this is the most popular sinful street snack in Indonesia. The texture is very rich with ‘heavy’ ingredients with choices of fillings.
The traditional Martabak Manis (the sweet one) only requires basic pancake ingredients with chocolate sprinkle and shredded cheese as the fillings. Yet nowadays, Indonesians are pushing their creativity to the next level by innovating the ingredients and variants of Martabak Manis. Thus, it is not hard to find Martabak vendors who offer Red Velvet Sweet Martabak with Oreo as the filling, or Sweet Martabak with Green tea-based Pancake.
As for the savory ones, nothing much has changed since the first day they invented Savory Martabak, only now you can pair Savory Martabak with mayonnaise.
- Es Pallu Butung (Makassar Iced Banana)
If you want to satiate your sweet tooth with rich, creamy, sweet, high-carbs dessert, try Es Pallu Butung! Basically, Es Pallu Butung is derived from Makassarese, a language that is largely spoken in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Es means ice, pallu is translated as cooked, and butung means banana. Thus, as the name speaks volume about its own key ingredient, cooked banana is highly required to make Es Pallu Butung. What makes it unique is, while serving Es Pallu Butung, we need to pour rice flour porridge on to banana—surprisingly a nice combo—mixed them together with your favorite syrup and ice cubes.