From a bird’s eye view of a Bali in innocence in the
1930s, Mexican painter, traveller, and amateur anthropologist
Miguel Covarrubias already noticed that the Balinese were
“continually eating at odd hours and in odd places,
buying strange-looking foods at public eating booths, in the
market, at the crossroads, and particularly at temple festivals
when the food vendors did a goldrush business in chopped mixtures,
peanuts, and bright pink drinks.” Dining out is not
a social custom in Bali, but the Balinese religiously consume
small, hot and cold snacks, sweets, and drinks during the
day at neighborhood warungs, market stalls, and mobile canteens.
Snacking makes up one-third of the average daily food intake:
whenever villagers gather to chat, engage in cockfights, perform
obligatory banjar work responsibilities, attend banjar meetings,
wash, pray, or celebrate religious occasions, snacks and warungs
enter into the social equation. Warungs range from temporary,
tarpaulin-roofed, makeshift, bamboo lean-tos, to stationary,
established, roadside food stalls (patched together out of
bamboo and oddments of timber with a long, hard wooden bench
set out in front). Men stop here after a morning in the rice
fields for snacks, coffee, a kretek cigarette, and conversation.
Old-fashioned, permanent market place stalls are snacking
paradise: noisy old ladies (wearing coiled, twisted towels
on their heads for carrying heavy loads) enthusiastically
sell sweet, raw honeycomb, cooked maize with grated coconut
and sugar, and individually cooked, steamed Balinese rice
cakes (jaja) iced with palm sugar syrup. Pudding sellers in
plain batik sarongs and long-sleeved lace kebayas proudly
dispense family recipe black rice pudding, sticky rice concoctions,
and sunny bananas simmered in palm sugar christened with roasted
coconut milk and pink sago pearls (made from the starch of
a widely-distributed, regional palm tree).
Bell-ringing, bowl-clanging bakso sellers nudge their brightly
painted, rickety, three-wheeled mobile carts, called kaki
lima (meaning five legs—three bicycle wheels and the
two feet of the cook!) from compound door to compound door
in the late afternoon selling bakso—a clear mild soup
containing boiled chicken or meat balls, glass noodles, shredded
cabbage, rice cakes, hot chillies, and herbs. They tinkle
a glass in their case with a fork, toot a horn, or blow a
whistle to make the unmistakable, resonating bakso trill heard
throughout the archipelago. (Loyal Balinese customers rush
through opulently carved household gates, anticipatory bowls
in hand!) Other visiting vendors tempt excited running, snack-seeking
school children outside for roast chicken with strong sambal,
small rice packets, and individually made and mashed orders
of minced, scented secrets encased in banana leaves. Travelling
trolley cooks also congregate outside Bali’s larger,
tri-weekly village markets and temple festivals promoting
tofu in sweet sticky peanut sauce, clear pork ball soup, and
green mung bean porridge in portable plastic bags. (Most street
cart food sellers are young, unskilled, otherwise unemployed
males from East Java and other neighboring islands.)
Reliable kaki lima vendors feed the thousands of licensed
beach sellers roaming the long stretch from Kuta to Seminyak.
Operating from often nothing more than an old bicycle with
a wooden board and plastic crate set atop the seat, they are
perfectly--and brilliantly--equipped and organized to portion
out pre-cooked nasi campur in folded, conical brown paper
holders for Rp.3,000 and regular coffee for Rp.2,000 (special
ginseng coffee costs Rp.3,000). These beach baristas stock
long, hanging strip packets of instant coffee: they snip one
off the row with scissors, unravel a plastic cup from a long,
pendulous sleeve, and pour in hot water brought from home
in two ceramic jugs. When they run out of boiling water, they
get more from a convenient sister whipping up regional specialties
at a nearby food stall. Roving, byegone Bali peanut sellers
balance a traditional bamboo pole across the back of their
shoulders supporting two large, V-shaped bamboo slings with
tightly packed fiber nets full of brown unshelled peanuts.
Early evening belongs to corn on the cob cart sellers: from
the sandy southern beaches to sacred temple ceremonies, they
fan (and sell for Rp. 2,000 each) charcoal-grilled, browning
ears of corn (jagung bakar) by portable kerosene lamplight
as the sun descends on the island of the gods.
Warung stalls set up at the local pasar malam or at Denpasar’s
bustling night markets to serve simple, fresh, home-cooked,
genuine local delicacies at minimal prices (nasi goreng with
fried egg for Rp.7,000) in minimal comfort. Popular snacks
include sweet, fluorescent ice drinks, rujak (a spicy, sweet
and sour fruit salad), satés, lawar, mie bakso (meat
ball and noodle soup), mie ayam (chicken noodle soup), sop
jagung (corn soup), tahu goreng (deep-fried, stuffed beancurd),
tupat tahu (spicy vegetables and tofu), salted peanuts, oversized,
swirled, rice flour biscuits with peanuts (rempeyek), mie
goreng (hot, fried, pinkish-red flat noodles), rujak cingur
(spicy vegetables with peanut sauce), and a vast, bubbly choice
of large, colorful, fried rice crackers (krupuk) sealed in
plastic bags. Nasi campur (mixed rice) is not only the basic
daily meal, but it is also the solid snacking backbone of
Bali: steamed rice shares a strong, supple banana leaf with
smaller, pre-prepared, condiment-cum-companion side dishes
like fried chicken, highly spiced pork, preserved salted eggs,
a potato, fish (ikan teri), bean sprouts, steamed vegetables
with shredded coconut, kangkung, jackfruit curry, sweet crunchy
tempe (kering tempe), tofu fritters, and fried peanuts doused
with coconut milk gravy. Warung nasi (rice stall) sellers
confidently scoop a large mound of rice out of a big basket
and toss on two or three of the mini-dishes, sambal (spicy
chilli paste), and crisp-fried shallots according to customer
choice, preference, and pocketbook (nasi bungkus is nasi campur
packed in a banana leaf to go).
Indigenous, informal, travelling village warungs offer grassroots,
rustic, compound kitchen cuisine. Older women stake their
customary territory and their small wooden tables and blackened
pots of food under the village banyan tree (a communal, offering-laden
meeting spot at the center of town) in the mornings and late
afternoons. Here they sell authentic, ancient family versions
of steamed white rice, coconut vegetables, pungent fish, spicy
meats, sambal, bubur ayam (Bali’s homemade chicken soup),
and creamy, soft-boiled rice porridges steeped with barbecued
chicken, roasted coconut milk, turmeric, lemongrass, and salam
leaves. Paparazzi sellers with a purpose, nomadic warung women
balance home-prepared foods, plates, and plastic buckets on
an upturned table on their heads as they track the local crowds
to village cockfights, temple festivals, and theatrical Barong-Rangda
performances.
