Sidewalk Cooking

popular style double cooker carried over shoulder

I am continually amazed at the many ways Indonesians come up with to make money. Bandung is Indonesia's third largest city with a population of over 2 million people. And it seems that most of them are outside at any given time! There is never a time - day or night - that Indonesians are not buying food from vendors along the sides of the road.


These vendors (usually men) work late into the night under crude hanging bulbs, then hurry to the market early the next morning to buy supplies and start the cycle over again. I read where one man, before he started working for a Christian, non-profit quilt company, sold soup on the roadside for (what would amount to) 50 cents a day, which was not enough to feed his family. I can't imagine that any of these roadside operations would make much by American standards, but then this is not in America and somehow they do manage to survive.

makeshift grill for roasting corn

Rainy season has officially arrived in Bandung. That means that it rains some portion of every day. When it begins to rain, the food vendors cover their offerings with a tarp or piece of plastic and wait for the rain to stop. Then they uncover it and cook some more.

squeeze a lotta chili sauce!

here's the deal...

Some of their operations are rather crude, but hey, whatever it takes to get the job done or rather the food cooked. There are the gerobaks (rolling food carts) and there are the ones where the food cooking/heating/serving containers are hung from both ends of a stick that is balanced across the shoulder (see photo at top). Then there are the ones who just set up a tiny makeshift grill and grill corn or strips of chicken or rabbit on a bamboo skewer.

cooking on a narrow grate - fish rolled up inside banana leaves

dough wrapped fried pisang (bananas)

One thing I might add is that I sometimes observe sidewalk cooks washing utensils right there on the spot. I feel quite certain that the water they are using is neither bottled, filtered or boiled. Some wash water is too nasty for words. So even if some of these foods look tempting on occasion, sidewalk sanitation leaves a lot to be desired and unwanted cooties can easily show up in your digestive track as a result. I have only been tempted to try 2 items (martabak manis and fried bananas wrapped in a thin dough). They were both good and hopefully the heat took care of any bugs that may have been lurking.

school children wait on fried bananas on their lunch break