Unpack this brick.
Garam Merica plays with the heartstrings of homesick Indonesians in Australia. Firstly, with nasi bungkus. Nasi bungkus is basically your rice and curry takeaway. Wrapped in a banana leaf and plastic coated paper, it’s an onigiri on roids. There’s something about eating off the banana leaf and not a hard plate that makes it all the more real and enjoyable.
Secondly, warteg. Wartegs often serve Javanese fare that is affordable and filling - food for the people. It’s a type of warung, a small shop/business that is ubiquitous across all 17,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Javanese food is known to be the sweeter of the Indonesian cuisines, with terasi (shrimp paste), palm sugar and kecap manis (sweet thick soy sauce) being typical ingredients.
By bringing these two elements together, Garam Merica is cooking with nostalgia. They are also streaming bangers from the national playlist and chatting to the punters like they would back home, so they do an ace job of evoking the spirit of the motherland.
Their menu includes a sprinkling of West Sumatran items, but honours typical Javanese dishes like tumis bayam (sauteed spinach) and kering tempe (fried sticky tempe), as well as some more interesting ones like the beef tendon curry. The baby squid in ink is fun to eat and mix with the rice, definitely worth the extra few dollars. The beauty of nasi bungkus is the amalgamation of gravies, and the process of manually working it together.
Overall the food is not as heavy and salty as back in Indonesia, which meant the lunch did not induce any comas - oddly disappointing. Nonetheless, great stuff from the team at Garam Merica. Really cool illustrations of the diverse Indo food practices decorate the walls, and it’s worth popping in just to see these. Makasih Mas, Mbak.
Warung (Small shop/business)
Tegal (City in Central Java)
Warung Tegal = Warteg (warungs started by the Tegal people)
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