If you like a spicy soup, like tom yam, you will love seblak.

Actually, I am not a big fan of spicy food. My tolerance with chili is very low compared to mostly Indonesian. But somehow, I want spicy food when my body approach my period.

I heard about seblak from many people. They said it was delicious, spicy, and worthed to try. I haven’t been tempted to try. I choose to eat instant spicy noodle when I was craving of spicy food.

Then, I moved to Purwakarta, West Java that really near Bandung, the “capital city” of seblak. Of course, there were seblak everywhere. And I still don’t want to try it. The red soup was really scare me to try.

Moreover, I was on my diet to reduce flour. I stop, or reduce, eating instant noodle, bread, meat balls, and that kind of food. On the other hand, seblak is only flour in my mind. Since, they use a lot of crisps (kerupuk). For me, flour crisp is fried, not boiled. It does not make sense for me.

Suddenly, Seblak Habibie, one of popular seblak seller in Purwakarta, open a branch in front of my housing complex. Every day I pass through the stall. It is not always crowded. Yet, there was a rush hour, usually afternoon until night. Okay, I get curious.

Yesterday afternoon, I came to Seblak Habibie wanted to try. It was so quiet because no customer except me. They gave me a little basket to put all the toppings I want. It is buffet, so we can choose any topping we want. I see various of crisps, tofu, meat balls, chicken leg, wing, bones, sausage, cow pebbles, chicken and quail eggs, seafood, any frozen food, enoki mushroom, Chinese cabbage, wet or dry noodles, etc.

I chose some crisp, tofu, meat ball, chicken egg, cow pebbles, and yellow wet noodle. Forget about my diet, lol! We can choose the level of spiciness. From original, little spicy, medium, spicy, a lot spicy. We also can choose little or many Kaempferia galanga (kencur). Broth will salty, sweet, or savory. This removed my worries about spiciness. I choose medium, savory, and little Kaempferia galanga. And I didn’t regret it!

The broth was as I expected. Not too spicy, savory, and warm. However, next time I will choose more Kaempferia galanga, because I love the taste. Obviously, It was not my last visit.

Considering my diet, next visit I will choose real food only, such as tofu, vegetable, mushroom, eggs, chicken wing or bones. Therefore, I can get the taste and still on my diet. Of course, this food is not for every day.

Actually, seblak is a popular street food in Indonesia. Almost in every city, there will be a seblak seller. Especially in a big city. Seblak originally come from West Java like, Bandung, Garut, or Cianjur. Although, it is still debatable who made the first seblak, but Indonesians mostly agree that seblak is coming from West Java.

This food is created because in West Java there was a surplus of crisp production. Many crisps were not fried and wasted. Then, they try to boiled crisps with broth consist of garlic, chili and Kaempferia galanga. That’s why the taste is unique. We also believe that this rhizome can increase appetite and warmer the body. Therefore, seblak become popular.

Nowadays, seblak come with many toppings according to the seller. shortly, you can add anything in seblak, because it is basically kind of soup.

photo: personal doc, Seblak Habibie at google