page_title: Street food of Indonesia
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Street food of Indonesia / History
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Foto. Studioportret van een verkoper van saté met zijn pikolan en klantenEnglish: Studio Portrait of a satay vendor with customers.Français&#160;: Portrait d'un vendeur de satay avec ses clients.
context_page_description: Indonesian street food is a collection of ready-to-eat meals, snacks, fruits and drinks sold by hawkers or vendors at warung food stalls or food carts. Street food in Indonesia is a diverse mix of local Indonesian, Chinese, and Dutch influences. Indonesian street food are usually cheap, offer a great variety of food of different tastes, and can be found on every corner of the city.
  Most Indonesian street food is affordable, with prices usually less than a US dollar. However, there are also some street foods that are priced more than 20,000 rupiah. Indonesian street food often colloquially called as kaki lima or jajanan kaki lima, which refer to five foot way pedestrian pavements along the street that often occupied by street hawkers selling food.
  In 2015, the Cooperatives, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Trade Agency recorded that Jakarta has around 56,000 street vendors and the spaces available for them reached just 18,000. The rest occupies the city's kaki lima pedestrian's pavements. The agency noted that the actual number is a lot bigger.
  Indonesian street food often tastes rather strong and spicy.
context_section_description: Street food has a long history in Indonesian tradition. Some panels of bas-relief on Borobudur describes travelling food and drink vendor, suggesting that the small scale food entrepreneurship has been established in ancient Java as early as 9th century. The inscriptions dated from Majapahit period circa 14th century also describes food and drink vendor as one of line of works in Javanese society.
  The influences of Chinese street food culture is also visible in Indonesia as early as Dutch colonial era. Numbers of Chinese origin dishes such as various noodles, bakso meatballs, lumpia spring rolls, dumplings and Chinese steamed buns (bakpao) are common in Indonesian urban areas. Numbers of local Indonesian dishes has also become the source of street food variants, as well as foreign influences. Satay for example, is believed started as a street food in the early 19th century, as a local Javanese adaptation of  Indian kebabs. On the other hand, Dutch influence is also visible in Indonesian street food scene, especially in cakes, pastry and cookies. School kids' favourite kue cubit for example, is a local derivation of Dutch poffertjes.
  The current proliferation of Indonesia's vigorous street food culture, is also contributed by its demographic condition; the massive urbanisation in recent decades. This took place especially in the country's rapidly expanding urban agglomerations in Greater Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Medan, Palembang, Denpasar, and Makassar. The rapid urban growth in recent decades has opened opportunities in foodservice sectors. As large numbers of rural population flocked to Indonesia's urban centers, many of them established a street food business. Today, it is easy to find a diverse collection of street food selling dishes from all over Indonesian archipelago; from Madura to Padang satays, from bakso Malang to siomay Bandung.
  In recent years, several new foreign influences also has enrichen Indonesian street food scene. They came from Western influences (especially United States), also from Japan and the Middle East. For example, today it is common to find hamburger, hot dog and sosis bakar (grilled Bratwurst sausages) food carts next to traditional bakso meatball pushcart in marketplaces. Street side Turkish kebabs and Japanese takoyaki food stalls also might be found, although they might not be authentic, because of the difficulties to acquire required imported ingredients, plus cheaper price range in Indonesian street food market. The taste also might has been altered to suit local's preferences, such as the addition of hot and spicy sambal chili sauce.
caption: Satay seller in Java, c. 1870, using pikulan or carrying baskets using a rod.
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