Reading an Indonesian menu: nasi, mie, goreng, bakar and how to ask for less heat
Most Indonesian dish names are a short sentence: the base, then how it was cooked, then what came with it. Learn about thirty words and a warung menu with no pictures turns into a list you can read.
Indonesian is written in the Latin alphabet, which makes its menus look friendlier than they are. Every word is readable and almost none is guessable: nasi, mie, goreng, bakar and pedas look nothing like their English equivalents. The good news is that the menu is built like the language, from small regular parts that combine the same way every time. Once you can take a dish name apart, a handwritten board at a warung, the small family-run eatery that feeds most of the country, tells you what you are about to eat.
A dish name is base, method, extra
Read a dish name from left to right. The first word is usually the base or the main ingredient, the second says how it was cooked, and anything after that is what came with it or where the recipe is from. Nasi goreng is rice, fried. Ayam bakar is chicken, grilled. Mie goreng seafood is noodles, fried, with seafood. Ikan bakar Jimbaran is fish, grilled, the way they do it on the beach at Jimbaran in Bali.
The bases
- Nasi (NAH-see): cooked rice. Uncooked rice in a shop is beras, which you will only meet if you are buying it.
- Mie (MEE): wheat noodles, usually yellow. Bihun (BEE-hoon) is thin rice vermicelli and kwetiau (kweh-tee-OW) is flat rice noodles.
- Lontong and ketupat: rice pressed into firm cakes, the first cooked in banana leaf, the second in a woven pouch of palm leaf. They come sliced into soups and under peanut sauce.
- Soto (SOH-toh): a spiced soup, different on every island. Bakso (BAHK-soh) is a broth of springy meatballs, sold everywhere from carts.
- Sate (SAH-teh): small skewers grilled over charcoal, most often with peanut sauce or sweet soy.
The cooking words
These are the most useful dozen words on the menu, because they tell you the texture and often the heat before the plate arrives.
| Word | Sounds like | What it means on the plate |
|---|---|---|
| goreng | GOH-reng | fried, in a wok or deep oil |
| bakar | BAH-kar | grilled over coals, usually brushed with sweet soy, so it comes out dark and sticky |
| rebus | REH-boos | boiled; mie rebus is noodles in broth |
| kukus | KOO-koos | steamed |
| tumis | TOO-mees | stir-fried, mostly for vegetables |
| kuah | KOO-ah | with broth or gravy; the opposite is kering, dry |
| penyet | PEH-nyet | fried, then smashed flat with a pestle into a pile of sambal |
| geprek | geh-PREK | crisp fried chicken crushed into chilli; often sold by heat level |
| pepes | PEH-pes | wrapped with spice paste in banana leaf and steamed or grilled |
| gulai | GOO-lie | a yellow, coconut-rich curry |
| balado | bah-LAH-doh | coated in a red chilli and shallot sauce, from West Sumatra |
| rica-rica | REE-chah REE-chah | a fierce chilli and ginger style from Manado, in North Sulawesi |
What is in it
Ayam (AH-yahm) is chicken, sapi (SAH-pee) beef, kambing (KAHM-bing) goat, bebek (BEH-bek) duck, ikan (EE-kahn) fish, udang (OO-dahng) prawns and cumi (CHOO-mee) squid. Daging on its own means meat and, unless it says otherwise, beef. Telur (teh-LOOR) is egg, and telur mata sapi, literally cow's-eye egg, is a fried egg with the yolk up. Tahu (TAH-hoo) is tofu, tempe (TEM-peh) the firm fermented soybean cake Java gave the world, and sayur (SAH-yoor) vegetables; kangkung, water spinach, is the green you will see most.
What decides how hot a plate is, more than the dish itself, is the sambal, the chilli relish that comes with almost everything. Sambal terasi is made with fermented shrimp paste and is the everyday one in Java. Sambal matah, from Bali, is raw: shallot, lemongrass, chilli and lime leaf in hot oil. Sambal ijo is the green one in Padang restaurants. Alongside sits kecap manis (KEH-chahp MAH-nees), the thick sweet soy that gives Indonesian food its dark, glossy finish, and a jar of kerupuk, crackers, which at a warung are often paid for by the packet.
Three kinds of place, three ways to order
At a warung or a cart, the menu is short and often painted on the wall or the glass of the cart. You order at the counter, or the cook comes to you, and you pay at the end by saying what you had. Carts on the pavement are called kaki lima, five feet. The name probably comes from the five-foot covered walkway colonial rules required in front of shophouses, where the first hawkers set up, though most Indonesians will tell you it means the cart's two wheels and its stand plus the seller's two legs. In Yogyakarta and Solo, the late-night angkringan stalls sell nasi kucing, cat's rice, fist-sized parcels of rice with a scrap of sambal and fish, and you take as many as you want from the tray.
At a pick-and-point counter, the food is already cooked and laid out in trays behind glass, and the name of the meal is the name of the system: nasi campur (NAH-see CHAHM-poor), mixed rice, in Bali, or nasi rames in Java. You get a plate of rice and point; ini (EE-nee), this one, and itu (EE-too), that one, are all the language it takes, and sudah (SOO-dah), that's it, ends it. The price depends on what you chose, so ask before you sit down if it matters. The cheapest version of this in Jakarta is the warteg, short for warung Tegal, after the Central Java town its owners traditionally came from.
At a Padang restaurant, a rumah makan Padang, the food of West Sumatra, the system can surprise you. In the classic style, called hidang, the staff bring a dozen small plates to the table the moment you sit down: rendang, the dry, dark beef slow-cooked in coconut and spice; ayam pop, pale steamed-then-fried chicken; gulai of fish or eggs; cassava leaves; green sambal. You are not being charged for all of it. You pay only for the plates you eat from, and the staff count them when you finish, so a plate you take a piece from is a plate you have bought. If you would rather have a single plate, many Padang places will also serve one from the counter: rice with the two or three dishes you point at, priced like a nasi campur.
The sentences that order a meal
- Saya mau nasi goreng satu. (SAH-yah mow NAH-see GOH-reng SAH-too): I'd like one nasi goreng. Quantity goes after the dish, so two would be dua at the end instead.
- Minta es teh satu. (MEEN-tah es TEH SAH-too): one iced tea, please. Minta is the polite word for asking for something and works everywhere.
- Makan di sini (MAH-kahn dee SEE-nee): eat here. Bungkus (BOONG-koos): to take away, literally wrap it.
- Ada yang tidak pedas? (AH-dah yahng TEE-dahk peh-DAHS): is there anything that isn't spicy?
- Berapa semuanya? (beh-RAH-pah seh-MOO-ah-nyah): how much is it altogether?
- Enak sekali! (EH-nahk seh-KAH-lee): really delicious. Sudah kenyang (SOO-dah keh-NYAHNG): I'm full.
To get someone's attention, a young server in Java is Mas (a man) or Mbak (a woman), the words for older brother and older sister. In Bali you will also hear Bli for a man. They are friendly without being familiar, and far better than a raised hand or a whistle.
Asking for less heat
Pedas (peh-DAHS) means spicy, and it is the word that matters most. Food at a warung is cooked for local tastes, and some cooks quietly tone a plate down for a foreigner while others do not, and you cannot tell in advance which one you have met. Say it as you order.
- Tidak pedas or the blunter jangan pedas: not spicy, don't make it spicy.
- Sedikit pedas (seh-DEE-kit peh-DAHS): a little spicy.
- Sambalnya dipisah (sahm-BAHL-nyah dee-PEE-sah): the sambal on the side. This is the most useful of the three, because you can then add your own.
- Pedas sekali: very spicy, if you mean it.
Some chains, especially the smashed-chicken geprek shops, sell heat by level, written in English, counted in chillies and running from 0 or 1 to 10 or more. Level 1 is already warm. And remember that the sambal on the table is extra: a plate described as not spicy will still come with a heap of it on the side.
For other needs: saya tidak makan daging is I don't eat meat, tanpa terasi is without shrimp paste, which hides in many sambals, and saya alergi kacang is I'm allergic to peanuts, which matters in a cuisine where peanut sauce covers so much.
Drinks
Es (es) is ice, and an iced drink puts it first. Es teh is iced tea and comes sweet unless you say es teh tawar (TAH-wahr), unsweetened; hot tea is teh panas. Es jeruk is iced citrus juice, usually from small local limes or oranges. Jus alpukat, avocado juice, is a dessert in a glass, often with a ribbon of chocolate syrup down the inside. Kopi hitam is black coffee and kopi susu is coffee with milk, usually condensed and sweet. Tanpa es is no ice and gula sedikit is less sugar. Air mineral is bottled water; air putih, white water, is plain drinking water, which some warung bring free in a jug or a glass.
Reading the price and the bill
Rupiah amounts are large, so menus shorten them. 25rb means 25 ribu, 25,000 rupiah; 25K means the same; and a small warung's board will often just say 25, leaving the thousands to you. In a sit-down restaurant, a price marked ++, plus plus, does not include a regional restaurant tax and a service charge. At the time of writing these together commonly add somewhere between fifteen and twenty-one per cent, and in Bali the top of that range is usual, so check the small print at the foot of the menu before you add it up. In a warung the price on the wall is the price.
Cash still works everywhere and small notes are welcome. Many warung and almost every café now also show a QRIS code, the national QR payment standard, which local banking and e-wallet apps scan; some foreign apps can too, but do not count on yours.
Two things worth knowing
Most Indonesians are Muslim, so pork is absent from most menus, and a halal sign is common. Bali, where most people are Hindu, is the big exception, which is why babi guling, roast pig, is the island's signature dish. Among the Christian Batak of North Sumatra, menu boards use a shorthand: B2 means pork and B1 means dog, and in Manado the letters RW mean dog as well. It is worth knowing the codes rather than meeting them.
During Ramadan, many warung outside Bali close by day or hang a curtain across the front so that people who are not fasting can eat out of sight. Eating is fine; eating ostentatiously in the street is not. And at any time of year, pass food and money with the right hand.
For how the words on this page sound, the vowels that never drift and the final k that is a catch in the throat rather than a k, start with the Indonesia field kit. Then sit down at the first warung with a painted board and order from the board, not the picture menu.