Hello, friends especially foodies!
Last Saturday Mom and I planned to have lunch in one of Japanese Food Restaurant which was located on Little Tokyo, South Jakarta.. But unfortunately this restaurant was permanently closed, but on the other side, it was our lucky, why we said like that cause in front of the Berlian lobby area of Blok M Square, a shopping center on Melawai street, held a hawker’s food exhibition, you might already wondering what’s inside the exhibition, right?
THE FOOD EXHIBITION
The exhibition was quite large, you could see that it had a gate, then inside, you could find so many food stalls, from ronde, orange squash, snack, baby crab, Korean street food, dimsum, gejrot tofu….
pempek, cendol, and wait a minute, an authentic food from our city, Mom then ordered at this food stall, it sold asinan betawi and also rujak juhi. Of course mom ordered her favorite Rujak Juhi (Dried Cuttlefish Rojak), our city authentic dish…
After ordered and paid, we kept searching for some other food, we passed the king fruit stall, cilok stall, smashed banana stall, kwetiau & glassnoodle stall, cakue stall, sate marangi, then I found a stall that I would like to try the food,
this stall sold East Javanese authentic food, Tahu Tek (Tek is the sound which produce by knocking the equipment, when this tofu seller walked to notify their customers. This was authentic hawker food in Surabaya, the capital city of East Java). But this time I tried their Egg Tofu so besides just fried tofu I would get the fried egg too.
UNIQUE WAY TO PAY
Anyway to pay here was quite unique, you needed to go to the cashier to change your money to their money ticket then you needed to pay with the money ticket for the food you bought. For some stalls nearby the cashier, the seller could help to ask one of the cashier come in order to get the money ticket to give to the seller.
I took a photo when we were waiting for our food and the dining area around. Although it was modest but it was clean and neat, quite large, and located in an open area with the canopy.
OUR FOOD AND DESSERT
The food we had that day, the one mom order first was
RUJAK JUHI (Dried Cuttlefish Rojak)
It contained noodle, dried cuttlefish, boiled potato then fried and cut, lettuce, cucumber and also fried chips. It served with the authentic peanut paste which had the middle savory and sweet flavour. A bit disappointed, mom said that this food was just so so, yeah after I tried it, they missed the sour flavour and also they didn’t give the amount of ingredients well in making the sauce..
Next, mine was delivered while mom was enjoying the RUJAK JUHI, here was the one from East Java
TAHU TELOR (Fried Egg Tofu)
It contained sliced rice cake, fried tofu in egg, beansprouts (they had two kind of it, the larger ones were boiled, the smaller ones were raw), and also fried chips. It served with the authentic peanut paste which contained the shrimp paste. In Surabaya it usually had deep flavour of shrimp paste, and it has sweet dominated flavour with a bit savory flavour, but what we had that day had less shrimp paste, with savory dominant flavour and too many garlic, weird, supposed to be not selling this dish if you don’t know how its’ original taste, Right?
When I was still eating, mom bought us something I wanted when I came there, Ronde Jahe. Actually ronde was the glutinuous rice balls and jahe is ginger, means it served with the ginger soup. Here was the stall where mom bought ronde for us.
Before finishing it, mom also bought us a young coconut on a stall. The seller opened the coconut fresh in front of you as the seller. Wow! The sound was a bit frightening.
Here was our dessert then, Young coconut and also Ronde Jahe!
YOUNG COCONUT
The coconut was fresh but it was difficult to eat its’ meat cause the hole that the seller made was too small. The coconut water was fresh and mom asked it unsweetened. It had sour fresh flavour as it natural flavour.
RONDE JAHE
The Ronde Jahe were so tasty in sweet flavour, but it wasn’t too sweet. They were fresh and soft. The small ones didn’t have any filling, while the big ones had crushed peanut inside. Soft and chewy, we loved it.
THE PRICE
The price for what we had there that day:
RUJAK JUHI ………………………………….. 35,000 IDR around 2.5 USD
TAHU TELOR ………………………………… 25,000 IDR around 1.75 USD
YOUNG COCONUT ……………………….. 20,000 IDR around 1.4 USD
RONDE JAHE …………………………………. 25,000 IDR around 1.75 USD
So the total was 105,000 IDR or around 7.4 USD.. How do you think for hawker’s food?
Although we didn’t have tasty food as we had imagined, but we still could get the fresh young coconut and the tasty ronde here, and we won’t see the food exhibition like this forever cause it usually only 2 weeks long so we had a great time here, unforgettable experience of dining the hawker’s food in an exhibition. How do you think?
Thanks for reading my article and hope you enjoy it, stay tune for more CRAFT things from me!