Ayam Goreng Jogja

I'm well behind on posts - we've still lots to show and tell from Taiwan, Penang, and now Langkawi, where we've been parked since Sunday.

Today I haven't even a photo to share (the photographer's off somewhere in the mangroves as I type), but I do have a link - to our story, in today's Wall Street Journal Asia, on Jogjakarta's tasty take on fried bird.

More after we return to the big, bad city (that's Kuala Lumpur). Have a great weekend, folks!

Comments

[Sputnik]

Ohh just in time, I'm heading to Jogja soon and been digging up your entries on the city's food scene and this one will surely be on the list.

Thanks.

[Pete]

This is the BEST food article I've read all year, Robyn. I loved Ayam Goreng - been to both Mbok Berek & Ny. Suharti, but never knew about their history nor preparation methods till you described them here. Thanks a million!

[Christelle]

I am looking forward to read your following posts, having been to malaysia last year! :)

[John]

Ah.... I'll be dreaming that fried chicken all week long. Such a great blog. Thanks.

[Robyn]

Hey Sputnik - the food there is pretty sweet but there are lots of tasties to be found. FWIW I found the sit-down stalls along the main street at night NOT to be particularly tasty. Do try and hit at least one of the soto spots we wrote up!

Thanks Pete, these articles (I've done a number of them for WSJA, if you click the Interactive Graphics tab on that article it will lead you to some of them) are really fun to research and write. I always learn alot, meet interesting people, and - of course - eat some great food! Can't really ask more of an assignment than that, I think.
Welcome Christelle, and thanks.

Thanks much, John.

[Sunny Sevilla]

Robyn, thanks so much for bringing back memories of the sheer deliciousness of Indonesian fried chicken. Hope you don't mind my sharing a few stories.

Back in my previous life as an investment banker, I used to take groups of clients to visit companies in Jakarta. On one of the more memorable of these trips, a client- one I'd been instructed by my boss to pamper- told me "Look, I really want to try the local food here. Could you take us somewhere real tonight? Not the typical fancy places we get taken to all the time." I took them to a branch of Ayam Goreng Suharti. He loved it, and eventually became a convert to many things Indonesian.

Years later, my mother asked me if I knew how to make Indonesian fried chicken. Turns out she'd been hanging out with an Indonesian nun who'd made it for some other nuns, and while my Mom wasn't there then, the other nuns raved about it. So I tried a recipe I found in one of Sri Owen's cookbooks, tried it - and it was close enough. Another convert.

I think I'll make fried chicken this weekend.

Knowing of your passion for street food, let me share a tip: a Jakarta-resident friend used to take me for dinner to the fried chicken stalls on Jalan Panglima Polim, near the Blok M area. The chicken there is excellent, too.

[Robyn]

Sunny - We're honored. What a great story! Thanks so much for sharing. And for the tip, filed for our next visit to Jakarta in a month's time or so.

[Justin]

Hi, I've just found your blog and it's wonderful :)

Thanks for your article about ayam goreng... I lived and studied in Yogya about 10 years ago and one of the joys of life there was the food. Soto ayam, Nasi rawon, nasi rames, sate Madura, es pokat, and of course ayam goreng and ayam bakar. Close to my student boarding house was an immensely popular warung called Puncik's that served very tasty ayam goreng. I ate 2 or 3 pieces many nights of the week. It seems quite gluttonous but it was so cheap and anyway, I had to put weight back on after losing 8kg from dysentery early in my Indonesian trip. I was disappointed beyond words when I returned to Yogya in 2004 and Puncik's had closed and the land was now a shophouse.

One Yogya food tip... The city's tastiest sate (satay) is widely thought to be the juicy sticks from Sate Samirono. Big cubes of sate ayam (chicken) or sate kambing (goat), they sell out quickly every night to hungry locals and out-of-towners. There are 2 locations, but the HQ is on Jalan Kaliurang just north of Jalan Ring Road Utara in Yogya's northern suburbs. In my 2 visits back to Yogya since I lived there, Samirono has never been far from the top of my list of places to eat!

[Justin]

BTW The other branch of Samirono is at Jalan Colombo No. 105. This gets a very student-y crowd and is very busy too.