Part 1: Sundanese Dishes 

I just realized in Indonesia if you want to eat Indonesian Food at restaurant, mostly only two kinds cuisine which are popular, Padang and Sundanese cuisine. Padang Cuisine become more popular because rendang was one of the delicious food in the world couple years ago.

However, I still do not know why many Sundanese cuisine restaurants or food stalls are survive Indonesia. I think because of the simplicity. If Padang cuisine mostly heavy, creamy, and spicy, Sundanese cuisine is light, raw, salty, and spicy. I feel home whenever I eat Sundanese cuisine. 

I was born in Surabaya, East Java and later live in West Java, which mostly has Sundanese Cuisine. I think there are many similarities between East Java and Sundanese Cuisine, especially the saltiness and spiciness. Therefore, I like Sundanese Cuisine rather than Middle Javanese cuisine which are dominated with sweetness.

Sundanese cuisine is synonymous with lalapan, the raw vegetables, such as lettuce, cucumber, eggplant, tomato, cabbage, local basil, leunca, cashew leaves, poh-pohan, and many kinds of vegetable leaves.

Some of them are I known since I live in West Java, like leunca, poh-pohan, cashew, and some leaves that I don’t know the name, but yummy! They always eaten with sambal terasi (a condiment like sauce made from onion, garlic, many chillis, tomato, and shrimp paste).

There are dishes like salad called lotek and karedok. Both are salad with peanut sauce. The difference is karedok use raw vegetables, but lotek use boiled vegetables.

However, there is also cooked vegetable, usually saute, like kangkung (water spinach), genjer, or mushroom. Then, my favorite sayur asam, a vegetable tamarind soup.

When we talked about rice, there has many variations. There will be a white or red rice, nasi timbel (white rice wrapped in banana leaves), nasi liwet, and nasi tutug oncom. Liwet and tutug oncom is white rice cooked with some spices, salty fish, and oncom.

There are also some variations of protein. Tahu (tofu), tempeh, oncom are some of vegetable protein. All of them are fermented soya bean and other nuts. Jengkol (stinky bean) can made as semur (sweet stew). It is like durian; you will hate or love it. No wonder I love it because I love durian also.

Then, many variations of animal protein. Fresh water fish, like carp (ikan mas), gourami, tilapia (nila and mujair), catfish (lele) are usually deep fried or grilled with some sambal or sweet sauce (bumbu asam manis). Sundanese also like salted from many kinds of fish, like peda, jambal, anchovy, cumi asin (cuttlefish), pari (rays), etc.

My personal favorite is pais or pepes, steamed protein or vegetables which are wrapped with banana leaves and marinated with spices. Pepes ikan mas, mushroom, and tahu are the most favorite pepes of all. However, you can make pepes from any protein and vegetables, like pepes ayam/daging. 

Chicken could be fried and roasted (bakakak ayam). Meats such as beef, goat, lamb, offal, could make as a soup, semur, fried (empal gepuk), marinated and grilled as satay (sate maranggi).

All of them are usually menu in Sundanese restaurant. On the next part, I will give some recommendation of Sundanese restaurant that I ever tried. Don’t miss it!