How Indonesian Migrants Abroad Preserve Their Identity Through Food

JAKARTA - It’s December 2023 on a chilly winter night in Cluj-Napoca in the heart of Transylvania. Four hours from now, it would be a whole different year. New Year’s Eve is always the perfect excuse to party, but hidden in a cramped up two-room apartment was a group of Indonesian students making the best of the last few hours eating foods that reminded of home. 

So while the rest of the city staggered through the streets clutching plastic cups of cheap prosecco, they stayed in the kitchen. It was rather chaotic, but not in a performative way. 20 something people were present, packed in that small space like a TransJakarta bus after 5pm. All Indonesians, except that one Romanian white girl who looked visibly confused but tried to blend in, nevertheless. 

“Man, this *seblak *is so good,” said Muza from Jakarta, who, on his best days back then, would only cook frozen chicken and rice to get by. Not anymore, though.

Sambal splattered on the wall, and the room smelled like a Nasi Padang joint tucked somewhere in Jakarta’s suburbia. There were dozens of disposable plates & cups. For Indonesian migrants abroad, traditional food isn’t just food. It’s a piece of identity, one that binds them together while living in a country where no one looks like them, speaks like them, or eats like them. 

You are what you eat

When French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin first said “You are what you eat,” he wasn’t simply referring to the modern health interpretation. He was talking about culture, class, habits, and identity in his 1826's Psychology of Taste. 

As if he was saying, “If I know what you eat, I know the kind of person you are, the culture you carry, the class you come from, and the life you live.”

When people cross borders, the first culture shock isn’t language or weather. It’s food. Or rather, the loss of it. And Indonesian migrants abroad know a lot about it. 

Indonesians often swarm to Asian grocery stores in search of anything that can summon a bit of home, but they don’t just need generic Asian shops. They need places that actually stock Indonesian brands. In Romania, that role falls to Asia’n Bucate in Bucharest, where you can hunt down instant Bamboe spices for rawon, ABC kecap manis, or even tempeh. And on a lucky day, you might stumble upon the real Indomie Rendang.

Aysa is an Indonesian, but she grew up in Bucharest as her parents have been working at the Indonesian Embassy there since around the ‘90s. 

She admits she misses Indonesian food. When she misses home, she cooks martabak manis or Indomie because they are the easiest to make. Not because they are the most special, but because they are reliable.

“Most of them have tasted Indomie or siomay,” she proudly admits that her bule friends have tasted Indonesia. But she finds it hard to find nuts, herbs, ingredients for the *rawon *black soups, and some items that she can't even properly name in English.

She hasn’t traveled to another country just to buy ingredients, but she knows how it works. Ingredients being shipped from Germany. From the Netherlands.

But to Indonesians, sometimes, cooking is easier than explaining themselves, like, “Here, just try it.”

The Indonesian Embassy in Bucharest is always present at the IWA Charity Christmas Bazaar every December. Months before around August, there would be an open house for the 17 August Independence Day, and another bazaar around September. Across the cities of Brasov and Cluj-Napoca, there would also be a cultural day where internationals would open a stand to promote their culture. 

Up in Western Europe, especially in Germany where Indonesians pop up in nearly every city, these kinds of festivals become essential anchors. There’s Pasar Hamburg in Hamburg, the Indonesien Köln Festival in Cologne, and the Indonesia Culture & Arts Festival (ICAF) in Frankfurt.

The list goes on. 

Finding Indonesia in Europe

The Netherlands tops the list of Indonesian enclaves in Europe, hundreds of years of colonial history made sure of that, followed by Germany. In those places, Indonesian food is everywhere; wander into Amsterdam and hit Ron Gastrobar Indonesia, Indrapura, Café Warung Pas, or Tempo Doeloe.

But drift eastward, past the comfort of Dutch corner shops and German Asian supermarkets, and the trail thins out fast. Across Central and Eastern Europe, where Indonesian communities shrink to tiny dots on the map, the hunt becomes real. It does feel like a treasure hunt when finding a specifically Indonesian restaurant, not just an Asian restaurant. 

So the first thing some Indonesian students do when they travel abroad is to find the original Indomie (as original as it can be) or Indonesian restaurants in that new country.  Not the kind of Indomie that’s tweaked, softened, engineered for European tongues and European rules. As best as they can. 

When Davin from Bangka and Muza went to Milan, Italy, they swapped the excitement of finding real Italian pasta for Indomie instead. They texted the Indonesian Students Association in Milan on Instagram to ask where they could find Indomie Goreng that stays true to its roots. 

“Can go to Chineat or Tang Food Market in Chinatown, near Garibaldi station, on Via Paolo Sarpi,” they said. 

Months later, when Davin went to Budapest with a friend, they abandoned the idea of savoury Hungarian goulash for Indonesian-style grilled chicken with rice at baKudapa Indonéz Ételbár, a small street-side joint. The meal cost around HUF 3,500—roughly IDR 176,000, about 5 or 6 times more expensive than street vendors in Jakarta. An abangan served the food. 

About a 15-minute walk from there, he found an Asian store that sold Indomie Soto the way he knew it—where he happened to meet some friendly Indonesian folks who were also living in Budapest for study and work.

Resta, an Indonesian who studied in Montpellier, France, loves opor ayam so much. 

Except in France, lemongrass isn't just rare, but an expensive luxury. So expensive that she had to make peace with committing a small culinary crime by cooking opor ayam without lemongrass. 

Tofu and tempeh existed, but they felt like jokes for how deep she needed to empty her purse for them. A small block of tempeh for 2.5 Euro, almost IDR 50,000. The same price for 500 grams of tofu. A bottle of tofu sauce for another 2.5 Euro. She had to deal with that for a year during her Erasmus mobility exchange program. 

**The jastip economy

And someone always seems to know when someone else is flying home.

This is where the jastip trade—that untranslatable Indonesian word—becomes a lifeline. Especially in Europe’s quieter corners like Romania where Indonesian communities are small.

The going rate is around EUR 10 to 15 per kilogram, roughly IDR 288,000, for a small, smuggled slice of home. For countries with a lot of Indonesians in them, the prices can be cheaper. Wrapped in a bubble wrap that honestly feels like contraband, because it actually is. On paper, airlines prohibit people from bringing items that aren’t theirs. 

Still, there’s something personal about that secret economy of longing. 

Because the truth is, no matter how globalized the world is, that little taste of home doesn’t always exist outside the archipelago. Importing Indonesian food, in a way that Indonesians know it and not trying to cater to European’s tongues, to Europe is not easy. 

From homemade sambal to dried spices, everything is scanned, tested, and measured against some of the strictest standards in the world. Chili-based products must clear checks for pesticide residue and mycotoxins that many small Indonesian producers simply don’t have the resources to monitor. Even European Indomie, Indonesia’s soft diplomacy weapon, doesn’t taste the way it’s supposed to.

“It tastes different,” Davin swears. European Indomie is blander, regulated, stripped of certain additives that EU law finds questionable. And besides asking for a stache of instant spices when doing jastip, he would add a pack or two of Sampoerna cigarettes to the mix. 

“The closest we have is when Indomie was imported from Amsterdam. And that’s a hub for Indonesian migrants abroad.”

Smaller Indonesia, everywhere they go

Wherever Indonesians go, they’ll build a smaller Indonesia. 

The scene of that two-room apartment in Cluj-Napoca is a common snapshot of what usually happens around the world with Indonesian diaspora everywhere. A bowl of rawon made in Hamburg. Frozen rendang inside a fridge in a commie apartment block in Prague. A pot of bubbling soto ayam competing with the winter air in a student flat in Copenhagen. Oil frying bakwan jagung in Melbourne. 

Because for Indonesians, home isn’t always a house. And wherever they go, they reconstruct their cultural tastebuds. Not to impress anyone, and definitely not to perform culture. But to survive in a smaller Indonesia, built quietly, meal by meal, city by city.

Resta’s France was not exactly a postcard France or the cutesy Emily in Paris kind of France. It was Montpellier kitchens, overpriced herbs, and, as mentioned before, *opor ayam *made without its soul. 

When she first landed in the city and didn’t know where the Asian markets were, she searched online and found a grocery seller somewhere in Belgium. “It was from Bruges,” she said.  said. She ordered Indomie, Kecap ABC, and spices in bulk without thinking. Whatever felt like home, and because the order was big, the shipping cost dropped to around 9 Euro.

She cooked for others once in a quiet kind of feast in April 2025, cooked like an open house. Opor ayam again with sambal goreng. Friends from Turkey, Morocco, and Azerbaijan came but Mexico and Madagascar didn’t make it. Only the Muslim friends showed up. They even brought snacks without being asked. That stayed with her.

But looking back on her time in the city, she had only fond memories.

There, Resta made Montpellier feel like a smaller Indonesia, the way she knows it best.