I’m not having great food luck in Yogyakarta — though I’ve had some delicious stuff here, for the most part the food has been just okay.
Ayam Geprek is one of those dishes where the gulf between how it looks and how it tastes could not possibly be wider.
It looks absolutely bizarre and completely unappetizing — just a brown melange of chicken scraps and rice. But it tastes outstanding.
There’s a theme in the Fast Food Around the World posts so far: they all revolve around fried chicken. That makes sense. Everyone loves fried chicken.
The lumpia from Harga Lumpia Samijaya is basically the best spring roll I’ve ever had.
I had a couple of hours to kill in the Jakarta airport during a layover, and I figured I’d get a bite to eat. There were a few interesting looking places, but the soups at A Fung Baso Sapi Alsi caught my eye.
I kinda felt like having chicken rice for my last meal in Malaysia, but I wasn’t particularly keen on walking in the sweltering heat to a restaurant that probably would have been closed thanks to Chinese New Year.
Chinese New Year threw a huge monkey wrench into my Penang plans; something like 75 percent of the restaurants I tried to go to turned out to be closed.
But in the case of Tong Lek 8 Cafe, I’m not even mad. I randomly found it after the place I wanted to go to turned out to be closed; I’m so glad I got to try out their amazing food.
I wasn’t planning on going to Kafe Ping Hooi, but the restaurant I wanted to go to turned out to be closed (thanks again, Chinese New Year!), and it was right there. I figured I’d give it a shot.
When I had the chendol from Penang Road Famous Chendol, the vendor across from it was closed because of Chinese New Year (Thanks, Chinese New Year, for making sure basically everything was closed during the bulk of my trip to Penang. Thanks. I was hoping that most of the places I wanted to try would be closed. You know, just to spice things up).
There are “cafes” all over the city in George Town that are essentially like little food courts. Each one has three or four vendors, usually specializing in one thing. And like a food court, you order, then walk your food over to one of the nearby tables.