What do I love sharing most on Google Maps?
Well, looking at my contributions on Maps, we can safely conclude that I love to share photos and reviews of food.
The quality of my reviews are poor, saturated with phrases like “best xx in town/city” without explaining why. That is mostly due to cultural preferences, we Indonesians don’t really read wall of texts, preferring a nice and short “review” like those that you can find at the back cover of DVD. Unfortunately, the other reason is I don’t have the ability to write a short and compelling review . . . yet. Subjectively speaking, the quality of my reviews are gradually getting better now, in exchange with the half hour I took to go through several loops of writing a sentence.
Ok, now the proverbial cat is out of the bag, we’re back to food.
Japanese food are quite well-known throughout the world. You can easily find sushi, sashimi, ramen, etc literally everywhere.
Indian food . . . Ha! My mouth immediately starts watering just by imagining chicken curry with basmati rice.
Chinese, Korean, Middle East, or to some extent Vietnamese and Thai food exists in every major city in Europe and America.
What about Indonesian food? Have you ever had one? Most people outside of Indonesia never even heard of the existence of Indonesian food.
Nevermind about people outside of the country, even people in Indonesia themselves never tasted the specialties from region directly opposed from where they live. Those who live in Sumatra and Java (west islands) couldn’t find any Papeda nor Kapurung of the east islands; and I’m pretty sure there is no decent “Pempek” in the whole Papua, the easternmost region with the size of a country.
Some background information for those who don’t know, or if you already know then I’d like to remind you that Indonesia is a loooong country with the length comparable to Europe (excluding Russia). The diversity is overwhelming, there are 20-ish major ethnic groups and some 700 living languages spoken in Indonesia. Just by these few facts alone, imagine how many dishes from Indonesia that the world miss?
When I was living in Sweden, there were times where I roll around in the dormitory because I miss this treasure of mankind:
Martabak Manis, it’s like a thick pancake but better
Some other times, I would involuntarily unable to sleep because my darn friends back home uploaded this beauty to their social media:
Kupat Tahu: a simple rice cake + tofu covered in peanut sauce, but with a finesse of a 2-star michelin chef
“Waahh waaahh… but that’s just pancake and some rice cake covered in peanut sauce that . . . ok, it’s quite hard to find an equivalent for that rice thingy”
Okay, but if you say martabak manis is just another pancake, then ramen is just a simple noodle.
Perhaps if I got more people to read my reviews / see my photos, there is a chance for them to go to Indonesia. Maybe one day the demand for Indonesian dishes will reach the critical mass needed for the Indonesian diaspora in the respective country to open an Indonesian restaurant. Then maybe years after that Indonesian food will be as ubiquitous as Japanese or Italian food in this world.
So . . . that’s it. I’m embracing my journey to spread the love for Indonesian food, one review/photo at a time.