As in other areas outside of Bali, the hospitality industry here needs some help -- starting with the dreary and dreadful hotel breakfasts. Knowing there's not much for them at that hotel buffet, visitors to Ambon seek out local guides for culinary adventure -- and adventure it is, from morning till night.
In the morning, head for the local coffee shops or rumah kopi. Start off the day's exploration with a look at the menu, filled with a variety of cakes and coffees -- and their funny-sounding names.
No one in our group was in the mood for toast or nasi goreng. Instead, my friends and I had our table loaded with punti (sticky rice cake and brown sugar), adisa (grilled cassava, also cooked with brown sugar) and the coffee of our choice. I had the nutty Kahlua with milk.
The next morning, a friend came by with a bag full of "the best lupis in town" -- another kind of sticky rice topped with brown-sugar sauce and shredded coconut. You soon learn Ambon locals always claim to have the "best" of this or that.
Naturally, for lunch and dinner, the choice is seafood -- the table often laid out with five or six kinds of fish and various sauces. A favorite is the colo-colo, a dip made with fresh green tomato and lemon that locals, again, boast is "only found here!"
Fish soup was the main entree on another occasion -- delightfully fresh and, fortunately, unspoiled by too many distracting side dishes.
Little did we know that was because something else was in store!
After our soup, it was durian time -- not a pretty sight, with our hosts tossing skin and seeds into the nearby gutter. If the tide had risen at that moment, Ambon would have been filled with spiky -- and rank -- durian skin.
By their second night here, visitors to Ambon know to eat measured portions, no matter how much your hosts deplore your appetite. When it comes to eating in Maluku's capital, you have to be ready for anything -- if it's not durian, it's a meal pushed on you barely 30 minutes after dinner!
The roadside is where the locals go to satisfy midnight cravings for giant squid, which is served either in a red sauce or simply fried and accompanied by juicy side dishes. One stall was in front of the Ambon Express Daily, not a bad place for a few hungry journalists.
Midnight feasting is the ultimate sign of peace having returned to Ambon, a tiny capital that saw its share of bloodshed back in 1999. Peace means anyone, regardless of religious affiliation, can join friends at any time of the day or night. And, unlike before, Ambon teems with nightlife.
Our midnight stall was located near the Al Fatah mosque and Silo church, each a symbol of "the other side's" camp during the city's religious conflict. These days, everyone mingles among the area's throng of stalls.
On the way back to the airport, your hosts will inevitably make one last recommendation -- to stop and pick up ikan asar, large, smoked fish, which you can have packed up for the flight home, complete with a lemon and chili sauce.
While you're at it, don't forget to check out what the legendary botanist Alfred R. Wallace raved about when he came to Maluku in the 1860s -- breadfruit!
He dedicates almost an entire page of his The Malay Archipelago to reminiscing about the "true breadfruit", which he called "a luxury I have never met with either before or since". In his chapter on "Amboyna", Wallace even discussed how to make the breadfruit, or sukun, available in London's Covent Garden Market.
While nothing extraordinary to Indonesians, foreign fans might want to test who does, indeed, have the best breadfruit.
While returning from a diving trip in Leihitu, this writer was given an entire bag filled with the stuff -- by the boat driver. I protested, offering him half, but he insisted he didn't want any.
I later realized why: he came from Latuhalat, south of Ambon, and had earlier said, "Sukun? The best sukun comes from my place!"
-- Ati Nurbaiti
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment