EatingAsia

Thirds, Please

We had a kueh keria moment - or maybe it was a Shan donut moment - a few days ago, at the morning market in OUG (a mostly Chinese enclave about 20 minutes from downtown Kuala Lumpur). We've been spending a bit of time there lately, on the good eats trail.

Bag-toting aunties clustered around a Chinese fry stall. There were the usual items  - sweet potato balls, curry puffs, red bean paste-filled glutinous rice balls. And little three-bite donuts.

I've never been a donut fan. The appeal of my country's contributions to the deep-fried sweet treat genre - Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts - completely eludes me. Nor do I generally like eating sugary items before noon. A cup or two of good, strong coffee is all the morning jag I need.

But this vendor forms her donuts lovingly, patting the dough as gently as if she were powdering her dear grandbaby's naked tush. Fresh out of the fryer, they beckoned. We ordered two.

How do you describe the ultimate donut?

Let me try. When it's still hot its skin is crackly-crunchy, with nary a hint of grease. Inside it's yielding, melting even, almost to the point of mimicking a firm custard. As the donut cools it retains some crispiness, while the interior becomes a fluffy pillow that meets the teeth with a bit of resistance. It smells and tastes of baked grain first, and then of some - but not much - sugar. The dough itself doesn't really need sweet, because that's what the extra-fine grains of white sugar decorating the donut's golden skin are for.

We ordered two more and ate them as we walked. Heading back to our car we diverted, as if pulled by some invisible, inexplicable force, for thirds.

And, this morning at first light, we drove back to OUG for more.

Wang Ping An (in red, handwritten Chinese characters) fry stall, OUG morning market (outside). At 50 sen each, you're crazy if you don't buy a dozen.

Street Food - Off and On the Street

We generally avoid malls and mall food like the plague. So it was a little disconcerting last year to find ourselves spending a lot of time in the region's shopping center food courts for a feature article in today's Wall Street Journal Asia 'Weekend Journal' (the annual Food Issue) on street foods cooked and served 'off the street' (a few out takes here).

I have to admit I accepted the assignment with some ambivalence. For me eating on the street is an integral part of travelling (where street food is available, anyway). It's such an easy and delightful way to connect with locals and immerse yourself in local culinary (and other) culture.

But I also realize that there are lots of travelers who, for whatever reason, just can't go there. And I do not turn my nose up at you. Street food is not just about the food, it's about the experience, and while the experience can't be recreated in a shopping mall food court or restaurant (though Saigon's Quan An Ngon comes pretty close), in the course of our research for this piece we found that - sometimes - the food can.

So I say, to those who just can't bring themselves to eat on the street or in a market: I'm glad that there are places like this, where you can find at least an approximation of the street's flavors. (I also say, put yourself in my hands for a day and I'll have you converted. But that's neither here nor there.)

For this article we visited malls and standalone restaurants in Bangkok, Jakarta, Saigon, and KL (we had help in Singapore) . And we found something interesting, a little tidbit that hasn't entered the debate about the desire of some regional municipal governments to sweep foods off the street: places like Jakarta's Kafe Betawi (a chain) or Tanah Abang food court may actually become repositories for some tastes of the street, as certain street foods disappear from their natural habitat.

The owner of Kafe Betawi, who is really very passionate about street foods, told me that she tries to conjure, in her restaurants, approximations of  street foods she remembers from her childhood that are now nearly extinct on the street. And on the 8th floor of Tanah Abang, a massive textile market, we found a street specialty - kerak telur, a sort of rice and egg 'omelet' with coconut and palm sugar - that we'd been searching for in vain. It was even cooked old-style, over charcoal.

***

That said, for us the street is still where it's at. I mean, just have a look at that opening photo: com tam (broken rice) topped with grilled pork, sweet-tart cucumber-carrot-daikon pickle, a fried egg, and scallion greens (fish sauce-chili dipping sauce on the side) taken with a glass of inky iced coffee at a tiny, low-to-the-ground beaten metal table, at 7am on a Saturday in an alley in Saigon's District 1. 

It's a dish we often overlook, common as it is to nearly every Saigon city block in the a.m., but it's so delicious. The broken rice is fluffy, light, almost couscous-like, the pork slightly sweet and smoky, the pickles a sharp counterpoint to the richness of the meat. The egg's yolk, broken to spill over the rice, pulls it all together. And the dipping sauce, with it's lightly sugared, fish-flavored chili punch, is the flavor of Vietnam itself. What a way to wake up. (That, and the coffee.)

But this meal isn't just about the deliciousness of what's on the plate in front of us. It's about being out and about when Saigon is at it's best, when the buildings still cast long shadows and the air is a bit cool and as close as it ever gets to clean; when the motorcycles, relatively thin on the street, speak a soothing purr instead of a deafening roar; and when locals, fresh from a night's sleep and not yet worn down from all the crap that a day in Saigon can throw at them, are at their friendliest.

(Smiles and nods also come from the sight of a couple of tall foreigners perched on kiddy stools hunkered down over a plate of com tam. Don't ever underestimate the power of partaking.)

 

It's about the aromas that waft about in that alley, the good ones: the comforting, enveloping smell of steamed rice, the hint of sourness rising from the vendor's jar of pickles, and the meaty smoke snaking up from the grill that taunts your growling belly while you're waiting for your plate of com tam and then, after it's delivered, stokes your hunger even as you're eating.

 

It's about the tinkle of bicycle bells and the honk of motorcycle horns (at the end of the alley sits an apartment building, and at 7am residents walk or ride by your table on their way to work, school, the market, breakfast, coffee), and the nods and high-fives sent your way by other eaters, many of whom probably breakfast here every single day. It's about the vendor's smile as she sets down your plate, the coffee lady's laugh at your pronunciation of 'cafe sua da', the privilege of watching your meal prepared right in front of you, and the pleasure of tucking into something so luscious yet so ridiculously cheap.

In short, this fantastic plate of com tam is about everything - the whole experience rolled into one tasty package. 

And that's why, given the choice, the street is where we eat.

Com tam, alley behind the opera house, Saigon. Starts early, closes when she runs out.

Soon-to-Be New and Improved (But We like the Old and Showing-Its-Years)

Ipoh was a mixed bag of hit and misses. Part of the problem was time - we didn't have enough and, since I was on assignment, it wasn't entirely our own. We blew town knowing we'd barely scratched its surface. (We did, however visit that tree; a former colleague of Dave's even tells us he appeared on the evening news hanging with some politicos).

Among the misses: entirely forgettable chicken rice at an Ipoh institution. Among the hits: the infamous ganja chicken (sorry Preeta, no photos) and dim sum at Restoran Foh San.

This place (like Lou Wong Tauge Ayam, apparently) gets mixed reviews. I don't know if we hit Foh San on an unusually good day (or detractors have hit it on off days), or if the fact that we were sharing a table with one of the owners and a demanding regular was doing the ordering had anything to do with it, but our breakfast amounted to some of the best dim sum we've eaten in a long time.

The prawn and scallop dumplings were a highlight, the wrappers lacking any gummyness and the seafood so fresh that one bite flooded our mouths with its briny juices.

Stir-fried radish cake (above, 3 o'clock) was surprisingly delicate and as light on grease as an absorbent cake fried in lots of oil can possibly be. The dish's bean sprouts were plenty crunchy and the cook added just the right amount of Foh San's housemade chili sauce.

Bean curd skin-wrapped prawn rolls (9 o'clock) were another hit, extremely crunchy and packed with not only prawn but large chunks of firm white-fleshed fish. I didn't even contemplate dipping into the mayo on the side.

spinach dumplings filled with minced pork, mushrooms, and water chestnuts 

I'm a huge fan of lotus seed paste which, paired with salted egg, is common filling for mooncakes. Foh San makes its own paste, and its perfect - smooth, not too stiff, and only slightly sweet. The predominant flavor here is lotus seeds. As it should be.

 

Foh San puts the paste inside chewy glutinous rice flour wrappers, coats them with sesame seeds, and deep-fries the lot. They're tasty, but they can't hold a candle to the lin yoong bao (opening photo), the lotus paste-salted egg mooncake filling inside a steamed bao. Check out the beautiful layers on that bao

We loved Foh San, but to tell the truth we're not sure if we'll go back. Located on the ground floor of the Perak Chinese Amateur Drama Association, the restaurant is quite a classic scene - whirring ceiling fans, steamer-laden carts whizzing here and there, tables crowded with mostly regulars who keep the volume pretty high.

But around the beginning of May Foh San will look very different; the restaurant is moving to a brand-new four-story building with a roof garden. Out will go the old tablecloths, chopsticks, steamer baskets (round baskets will be replaced with square), and tea pots (except the blue-flowered pots, in which cha wang - the 'king of teas' - is served). There will be no more carts; patrons will have to order their dim sum. Everything will be new and spiffy and smart. Presumably, the food will be as good as on the morning we dined there.

But we just can't imagine it being the same.

Restoran Foh San, G/F Perak Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association, corner Jalans Mustapha Al-Bazri and Dato Thawil Azar, Ipoh. Mornings.

As of the beginning of May (estimated): No. 51 Jalan Leong Nam, Ipoh.

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An aside: this will be the last time - for a while - that I plug Dave's new photo blog, but the opening photo of this post is my favorite from our recent sojourn in northern Thailand. This lady really touched us.

Debut

After much hemming and hawing Dave has finally started a photography blog. Look for a little food and lots of, um, other stuff.

Just one post so far, but he swears he's on a roll.

A Soto Crawl

In Malaysia there's laksa. In Indonesia there's soto.

Soto, generally speaking, is a dish of meat, meat broth, and rice, rice cakes, or noodles. It might be considered Indonesia's national dish, served as it is from Sumatra to Papua and in enough variations to fill an entire cookbook (say, there's an idea). It's said that the humble soto was once the food of sultans.

We'd never paid much attention to soto. Much like Vietnam's national dish, pho, soto is omnipresent, available in many an open-air eatery and on seemingly every other street corner. But really truly delicious soto - now, that's another story. If you've had one MSG-laden so-so soto, you've had them all - or so we thought.

Until in Jogjakarta, over the course of three bowls of soto, our friend Adzan opened our eyes to the possibilities inherent in a simple bowl of soup.

Our first stop: Soto Kadipiro, housed in a tile-roofed wooden structure and furnished with wood-and-glass display cases and old-style formica-topped tables, aged bird cages hanging from the ceiling. We fell in love with the place the moment we walked in the door.

The specialty here is chicken soto, saffron hued broth of chicken, turmeric, ginger, garlic, shallots, and daun salam (also known as 'Indonesian bay leaf' though it has no relationship whatsoever to Western bay leaf) packed with shreds of chicken meat, shredded cabbage, and barely sprouted soy beans, all crowned with carmelized shallots and chopped cilantro. (We asked for rice to be placed in our bowls, though it's possible to order it on the side.)

What's unusual at Kadipiro is the accompanying sambal, sliced tomatoes mixed with chopped fresh chilies and a bit of vinegar (behind the soto, above).

Kadipiro opened its doors in 1924 and is now overseen by the original owner's son, Bapa Widadi Dirojo Utomo. His brother prepares the soto according to the original recipe, using about 50 chickens a day; the place is so popular the soto's often sold out by noon.

At Kadipiro you can wash your soto down with Sarsaparilla, a refreshing, vaguely root beer-reminiscent beverage that's been produced in Jogja since at least the sixties. We love the bottle and its label, which just looks so right on one of Kadipiro's plastic-topped tables.

From white meat we moved to dark, at Soto Pak Sholeh Al Barokah, another oldy-but-goody soto establishment. The sign over Pak Sholeh's entrance translates to something along the lines of  'If you give good things good things will come back to you.'

Pak Sholeh does indeed give good things, in the form of a luscious beef soto. For a beef-based broth this soto's is surprisingly light on the palate, but completely satisfying. An order of soto also contains cabbage, sprouts, beef chunks, and the odd piece of tomato, chopped cilantro on top. 

Diners can, if they wish, dip into the bowls on each table that are filled with with chunks of dried, smoked beef. Though it looks as if it might be tough as nails the meat is surprisingly tender (I wanted to carry a few pieces back to KL, slice them thin, and slap them between two pieces of good Dijon mustard-slathered bread. It's a plan for our next visit). The sambal on the side is hot as hell (a plus in our book).

Pak Sholeh entered the beef soto trade as an assistant to his uncle and began selling the dish on his own as an ambulatory street vendor in 1952. In 1984 he set up a small warung which, a decade or so later, assumed its current form: an airy, homey shop furnished with wooden chairs and tables and a bits and pieces of family memorabilia.

Shortly before the Asian tsunami (which he forsaw in his dreams, we're told), Pak Shohleh passed away suddenly. Now his wife, the warm and gracious Ibu Sholeh, cooks the soto. She starts every morning at 4am, simmering the beef in water for four hours before removing it, cutting it into small pieces, and frying it with palm sugar. The recipe for the soup, she says, is 'no secret, just shallots, garlic, white pepper, ginger, salt, and palm sugar.' For the savory sambal, she sautes fresh chilies with a bit of beef stock.

Daughter Siti runs the front of the house. Asked why Pak Sholeh's beef soto is so popular she replies, 'Thanks to God. People taste it, they love it, and they tell their friends.' Many clients, she says, are long-time regulars who've been eating soto made according to her father's recipe since he sold it door-to-door on the street.

Our last soto of the day was had at a shop specializing in a version from the Javanese town of Kudus. It's called, appropriately: Soto Kudus.

There's no nostalgic back story here; the shop was only opened in the last couple years. But Adzan claims it serves the best soto Kudus in Jogja, and for our purposes that's all that matters.

All in all it's a magnificent bowl of chicken broth with a strong cinammon presence; it's also, relative to the versions we downed before it, sweet. The usual suspects - bean sprouts, white and dark chicken shreds - were present, along with an appetizingly fragrant mound of fried garlic shards that scented the air around us as steam rose from the broth, around and through them. In spite of the fact that we were much too full for a third bowl of soto we slurped it right down. We would gladly return to Soto Kudus on emptier stomachs.

Call it an awakening of sorts; soto now occupies a prominent position on our Indonesian food radar.

Soto Kadipiro, Jalan Wates 33, Jogjakarta. 0274-618722.

Soto Pak Sholeh, Jalan Wiratama 84, Tegalrejo, Jogjakarta. 0274-560584.

Soto Kudus - sorry! Details to come.

Coffee, Please

Desperately seeking a source of excellent quality beans that we can grind at home. No Starbucks, nothing sold in a grocery store.

If you live in KL and have a tip please drop me an email (link on your right) or leave a comment.

Thanks!

The Birth of A Kueh

We love foods old-fashioned, tried-and-true, and solidly dependable. But there's nothing wrong with new, especially when it tastes like this.

We give you: kuih cendol, a layer of agar-agar jelly made with coconut milk and shot through with cendol 'noodles', topped with another layer made with gula Melaka. Cute in concept and pretty to look at, but how about the flavor? Well, imagine the tastiest cendol you've ever eaten and subtract the ice. The 'noodles' are firm and redolent of pandan leaf, the coconut layer is as coconuty-lemak as a jelly can possibly be, and the gula layer evinces palm sugar-ish sweetness tamed by a hint of smoke.

I happened upon this lovely invention today at our favorite fish head noodle stall. Owner Michael Hong always has a small tray of various kuih (as well as cendol and sweet soups) on offer, should you still have an appetite after a bowl of his lovely gingery-tomato-y noodle soup with sliced haruan fish. The kuih are usually sold out by 12:30 or 1pm, so when I spied this specimen on the way in I reserved a couple to eat there with my lunch companion, and two more to take home to Dave (he was so grateful he got out his camera).

Good thing too, because by the time we left they were gone. (Pssssst - Michael says these are even better straight out of the icebox).

SS20 Fish Head Noodle, Stall 20, Medan Selera MBPJ Daman-sara Kim, SS 20/10, Petaling Jaya. No guarantee of availability; kuih selection varies day to day.

Good Old Old Town

A friend visiting from the States once observed that Kuala Lumpur is a lot like Los Angeles. I've not spent much time in Los Angeles, but from what I've heard about the place I reckon he's right.

To whit: KL is a Car Town (or, at least, a motorcycle town). Our train system may look impressive on a map but at ground it's an overall disappointment. There's buses, but they don't ply enough routes to be super convenient and on many of the routes the vehicle travels in one direction only - meaning that if you want to get from point E to D you'll have to sit through stops F, G, A, B, and C first. As for taxis - don't get me started.

Also: Kuala Lumpur is a spread-out city, a collection of neighborhoods linked by a tangle of freeways masquerading as 'roads'.

And: There's not alot happening, culinarily speaking, downtown. The Petronas Towers are awesome but I'd really rather eat elsewhere.

Like in the 'hoods.

Which brings me to PJ, an acronym (it's a fact that Malaysians, given half a chance, will acronym-ize anything) for Petaling Jaya, a collection of satellite neighborhoods called 'sections' (seksyens) that bear numbers corresponding to the order in which they were built: Section 17, Section 2, etc. If you're staying in KL for any length of time you owe it to yourself to grab a taxi (yes, unfortunately, only a taxi will get you there) and head out to PJ, because the various sections boast plenty of good eating.

I suggest Old Town - more slang for PJ 1, the first section to be hacked out of rubber estates way back in the early fifties. The best word I can think of to describe Old Town is 'funky', and I mean that in an entirely agreeable way. It's streets are lined with old wooden and concrete single-story bungalows, its 'downtown' is a mish-mash of fast-food restaurants, hawker stalls, and kitchen and household goods stores stocked with a mind-boggling assortment of items, and many of its eateries have been around for decades.

You might start at Old Town's market, which is jumping and heaving most mornings, weekends especially. Prices are low-to-the-ground cheap, so folks from outside Old Town come to shop there as well. It's one of those authentically Malaysia-Truly-Asia kind of places, not a product of official muscle but just the sort of scene that arises when folks of different races, left to their own devices, happen to end up sharing a neighborhood, or just an affinity for good fresh foods at rock-bottom prices. A trip to the PJ Old Town morning market always reminds me that Malaysia, among its ASEAN neighbors, is really a pretty special place.

On Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays only you'll find, in a dingy rear corner of the market, husband-and-wife team Mr. Chang and Mrs. Kok, purveyors of a memorable nasi lemak. The dish's barely coconut-scented rice (grains intact and distinct) is garnished with Mrs. Kok's locally famous chicken curry with potatoes, two types of sambal (one hot and spicy, made with ikan bilis or tiny dried anchovies, the other comprised of mini prawns in a mild tomato-chili sauce), and a piquant dried condiment of dried prawns ground with shrimp paste and chilies.

 

Mr. Chang was born in Old Town some 59 years ago and, with his wife, has been selling nasi lemak from the same spot in the market for over thirty years. Both are retired. I once asked Mr. Chang about their abbreviated business hours. Why not also sell during the week? His answer: 'Why bother? We make good enough money, and Monday to Friday we can relax with the grandkids. We could work harder and get more money, but what for?'

I can't help but admire his attitude.

If you arrive in Old Town too late for breakfast then there's always the possibility of a home-cooked lunch. An old house on Jalan Pasar 1/21 is an open secret among local eaters for the fabulous pork noodles that are served, unadvertised, out back (you can also eat in the family's kitchen). You don't need a sign. Follow the crowds.

Novelty value aside, these are some seriously good pork noodles. The supremely porcine broth is packed with choy sum (Chinese mustard) and crowned with a little mound of fried garlic and crispy crackling. Yong tau foo (stuffed bean curd, fried bean curd skin, etc.) is an optional go-with, and it's all fantastically fresh. And then there's the siu gao (boiled dumplings), bursting at their seams with minced pork and nubs of water chestnuts and carrots.

Noodles, of course, can be had wet (in soup) or dry (mixed with dark soy, soup on the side). Unless you're a regular you won't get the warm and fuzzy here, but the place is PJ Old Town personified: characterful, old-style, and well worth the discerning eater's time.

Just up the street you'll find Chan Lee and her tong sui and herbal teas stall. Mrs. Lee - usually kitted out in Chinese auntie pajamas, a wide-brimmed straw hat, and thick-framed dark sunglasses that would inspire envy in the heart of any Chinese Communist Party cadre - has been an Old Town fixture for 45 years, which would make her business nearly as old as the place itself (her son takes over late in the afternoon).

I'm a late but fervent convert to tong sui, or sweet soups. As incongruous as some of their ingredients may seem to the Western palate, they're in actuality not too sweet, light, refreshing, and - though usually served warm - really do, as advertised, cool you down on a hot day. Ms. Lee's standouts include her tong yuen, smooth, chewy glutinous rice balls filled with sesame paste and floating in a spicy ginger syrup; I also like the white cloud fungus and longan in herbal broth.

Her five herbs tea, however, I just can't countenance. The thickish moss green concoction - a favorite with lorry drivers, judging by the number of trucks that stop at the stall whenever I'm there - is so awfully bitter I could only manage a swallow (this of course means, according to the logic of Chinese herbal medicine, that it's incredibly good for you) before returning the glass to Ms. Lee, who offered it as a freebie the last time I visited.

I felt like an uncouth ingrate, but Ms. Lee understood my limitations: 'Not many foreigners,' she said, nodding, 'can take that drink.'

Chicken Joy in Penang

The first time we visited Penang we were lucky enough to hook up with a taxi driver who's crazy for food (that's kind of a silly thing to write, actually; we've yet to meet a Penang-ite who wasn't crazy for food). Over the course of one long, delicious morning he introduced us to an exquisite version of assam laksa, a wonderfully porky specialty that's often overlooked by visitors, and a very good cendol that might have assumed 'best' status in our book if we hadn't already eaten better in Malacca.

Mr. Goh also introduced us to Kafe Kheng Pin, an old-timey coffeeshop where a hawker sells exquisite lor bak and prawn fritters (more on those tasties later). As we sat there eating, licking our fingers in between bites, he pointed to another stall where a Hainan chicken vendor was setting up for business.

'And that,' he said, 'is the best chicken rice around.'

We groaned. We just didn't have any more room! But we never forgot those words of Mr. Goh's, uttered almost two years ago.

And so, when we found ourselves in Penang at the beginning of this year we set aside time for two visits to Kheng Pin, one for lor bak and prawn fritters and deep-fried squid, the latter of which we had somehow missed the first time around (and oh my, what an amazing deep-fried squid it is), and one for Hainan chicken rice.

 

On this day we found the vendor working with his wife and their son. It was lunchtime, and almost every table was graced with an order or three of chicken rice. We waited a full fifteen minutes for our lunch, watching as she cleavered chickens one after the other with amazing speed, while he dressed the plates with cucumbers and a drizzle of this and that; meanwhile the couple's son son flew around the coffeeshop delivering plates of goodness to appreciative and hungry customers. 

Well, we don't know about 'best', but Mr. Goh's praise for this version of what is in reality a very simple dish was on the money. Our order included breast meat, usually the least tasty part of the chicken. But this bird really had flavor. Before slicing a breast into strips to top the rice Mrs. Chicken Rice whacks it once with the side of her cleaver, resulting in wonderfully tender pieces of meat. The chicken is cooked perfectly, still light pink at the bone, soft but with a bit of chew, and absolutely silky. The meat is almost eclipsed by the rice, individual grains shiny with chicken fat and infused with the bird's flavor.

This stall, like most of the best in Penang, has been around for a while; Mrs Chicken Rice's mother opened set up shop at Kheng Pin over forty years ago. Happily, the couple's son looks set to carry on the business. It's a must-visit if you find yourself in Penang.

Hands down the best Hainan bird we've eaten in Penang. But in all of Malaysia? Well, that may be up for debate in a couple days. This morning we're off to Ipoh, which many Malaysians would argue is the spot for chicken prepared in the Hainan way.

Hainan chicken rice at Kheng Pin, 80-82 Jalan Penang, Georgetown Penang. 630a-3pm (Hainan chicken rice from about 10-ish). Closed Monday.

Sugar Burger

 

We'd heard that folks in the vicinity of Jogjakarta like their food sweet. But our wildest imaginations could never have conjured the Sugar Burger.

This is jada, a fat tofu or tempeh 'patty' simmered in sweet soy sauce mixed with loads of palm sugar and sandwiched between two soft rice cakes. When you take a bite the bean curd oozes sticky, salty sweetness. It's a snack sold all around the area (but made most deliciously at a small shop on the road to the Ullen Sentalu Museum). Some call it the Java Burger but - for obvious reasons - we think Sugar Burger's the more accurately descriptive title.

 

Diners assemble their own burgers from a tray of rice cakes, tofu, and tempeh. Chilies are an optional but, we think, necessary burger condiment, offering as they do a welcome, shocking hit of spice that perks up the whole package. One Sugar Burger's our limit, but not because the three-bite treat isn't tasty. The tofu and tempeh are actually unexpectedly addictive, combining as they do an assertive beany-savoriness with the subtle bitter-sour-sweet notes characteristic of high-quality palm sugar (think of the way plum sauce 'works' with Peking roast duck). It's those rolly-polly rice cakes that prevent us from eating more; they're way filling.

Sugar Burgers, aka jada, shop uphill from Jogjakarta on the way to Ullen Sentalu Museum; it's on you're left heading uphill, about 5 minutes from the museum. Look for the sign ('Jada', not 'Sugar Burgers').