A Tiny Guide to Appreciate Jajan Pasar

With the surge of viral foods and superficial reviews, do we still have spots for the simple joys of Jajan Pasar?

Mar 11, 2024

Halo! Happy Monday to you and everyone new to Kepayang. Welcome on board. 🏞

Last week, a TikTok video of mine showing bits of what we did in Kepayang’s first-ever Community Hangout went viral. I’m talking about 100,000 views and 300+ new followers within 24 hours viral. While I’m so excited to see hundreds of new names here, I feel like I haven’t introduced myself enough from that 40-second video. So here’s a refreshment.

My name is Fabi, I’m a Le Cordon Bleu Australia graduate with a passion for food, sustainability, and culture. Today, I’m a full-time content creator, small business owner, and initiator and writer of Kepayang. On top of building a community, Kepayang is a personal newsletter at its core. Here, I write essays and tell stories about the three things I’m passionate about - from exploring why Indonesians don’t eat enough veggies, arguing that we should stop translating names and retelling very Indonesian Christmas food traditions. The newsletter is published biweekly every Monday morning, so you have one more thing to look forward to besides your work.

Today’s newsletter is a special one as this is a coverage of the topic being discussed in last month’s Community Hangout — Jajan Pasar. I will be talking about:

🍰 The very broad definition of Jajan Pasar and how it came to be the Jajan Pasar we know today.

🛒 The unfair economics of it, especially on how their price points don’t reflect its long, tedious, and manual cooking process.

🍡 Brief descriptions of the commonly found Jajan Pasar, ones that are being served in Kepayang’s Community Hangout!

💡 Ways for us to elevate Jajan Pasar so that it’s on par with the trendier European or Eastern Asian desserts.

Kepayang is free for now, so any engagements mean so much to support the platform’s growth. You can subscribe to get the newsletter sent directly to your email, like, comment, and share if you resonate with what I write.

Alternatively, you can buy me a coffee through my PayPal here: https://paypal.me/chalafabia - or if you’re based in Indonesia, you can send your donation through QRIS here (under the name Tamanan). Any amounts are welcomed and will directly contribute to sustaining this platform to cover expenses related to operations, research, writing, and marketing. ☕️

Jajan Pasar. By definition, ‘jajan’ is a verb for when you are buying small foods and ‘pasar’ means market. But both together, Jajan Pasar can mean more than buying small foods in the market. Jajan Pasar is also an umbrella term for all the small, bite-sized foods and snacks usually sold in traditional markets.

With countless variations of shapes, ingredients, textures, and flavours across the Indonesian archipelago, I would categorise Jajan Pasar into three lazy categories:

Kue Basah: Much like the name, Kue Basah (lit. wet cakes) are cakes that have a high quantity of moisture due to their cooking process, usually being steamed or fried. One of the most popular ones is Bolu Kukus. Imagine a sponge cake batter, poured into a cupcake tin, and steamed. It’s not a steamed cupcake though. It’s Bolu Kukus.
Kue Kering: Kue Kering (lit. dry cakes) is the antithesis of Kue Basah. It usually refers to cookies and biscuits, which have less moisture content than Kue Basah. They’re baked in an oven and usually served in a bigger quantity in a plastic container. Kastengel (lit. cheese stick) and Lidah Kucing (lit. cat tongue cookie) are a few of the crowd’s favourite kue kering, which also happened to be of European origins.
Gorengan: Gorengan (lit. fried food) might not be what you think of when you first hear the term Jajan Pasar, but the truth is, they are always there. It refers to deep-fried food, usually made of vegetables and tastes a bit more savoury. Think of fritters. Corn, carrot, and cabbage fritters.

Do you know any other Jajan Pasar outside these categories?

Personally, I enjoy eating Jajan Pasar in the afternoon with a cup of hot black coffee on the side.

It’s that awkward time of the day when I don’t feel like working anymore, but still have plenty of time to actually finish one to two tasks. So what I do is to have a cemilan break - a break for me to just munch on something small.

When I still work in a tech company, one of the perks they provide us is a different Jajan Pasar every day. Around 4 PM, everyone would get a Slack notification telling what the Jajan Pasar are today (I said ‘are’ because there would be more than one option), and in seconds, everyone would just take off from their desks to get them.

It’s honestly a very neat solution to our snacking problem. Because if you ask me, most of the time, I don’t want to commit to one full item when I snack. I always like to get small bites of a few different things. So to accommodate that, along with everyone’s different taste preferences, most companies or event organisers would just go to a caterer that offers these Jajan Pasar packages. There’s the sweet package where all the Jajan Pasar would be… well… sweet. Then there’s the savoury package, and there’s the mix package. Each probably offers four to five different types of Jajan Pasar. And I swear these caterers know their shits because anyone could blind-pick these packages and everyone would still be happy.

Some caterers would make their own Jajan Pasar, but it is also common for some to source them out of the house, one of the most legendary ones being located in Pasar Senen, Jakarta Pusat.

The Sentra Kue Subuh (lit. Dawn Cake Centre) located in Pasar Senen has been around since the 1980s. The exact market spots have moved from time to time around the Pasar Senen area, but one thing that is always consistent is that their opening hours are from night to dawn, hence the name.

@berusahavegan jajan pasar gemas dari Pasar Senen yang cocok buat para cwk dan cwk kuweee 🎂🍰🧁🍥🥮 #kulinerjakarta #serunyakuliner #menuviral #fyp #jajanpasar #pasarsenen #berusahavegan

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From far away, you know you’re in the right place from the very lively crowds and the bright white lights on the ceiling. Entering the market area will also be a stimulation bomb as you will see rows and rows of stalls selling colourful cakes, cookies, and snacks. Here, everyone is basically shouting, both the sellers and the buyers.

The crowd here are pros, they know what they want. If I were to compare with other night markets, such as Pasar Lama Tangerang or Jalan Sabang strip, where people take their time slowly to go around and browse for food that they will buy, in Pasar Senen, they just know what they’re going to get and would most likely go for it directly. All in all, a lot of actions are happening at the same time. Sellers packing the cakes into a takeaway box, buyers counting their cash and coins to pay, and me, making a TikTok video out of this experience.

Honestly, it’s a 100x more colourful, lively, and exciting experience than Glasgow's Willy Wonka Experience.

Pasar Senen is what we call a first-hand seller, as most of the people here are also the same people who made the cakes and snacks, making it possible for them to sell at a very low price point. A Rp1,000 can get you one Kue Hunkwe, Rp2,000 for a slice of Lapis Legit, and Rp3,000 for one Onde-onde. It’s a very attractive price even for resellers. I’m pretty sure if you’re a cafe/restaurant owner, you would probably have once considered buying a ready-made Lapis Legit here rather than spending 6 hours in the kitchen.

For me, these prices are insanely low, especially when compared to how much time and energy it takes to make them (Source: trust me bro, but also, my eyang uti (grandmother) owns a catering business).

Let’s compare it with a trendier dessert item that you would find in most cafes right now. Like croissants, mochis, caneles, or the most insane one right now, cromboloni, a child between croissant and bomboloni. These European and Eastern Asian desserts might also require a complex cooking process. Yet, their price points are so much higher than Jajan Pasar. One croissant here in Jakarta would probably cost Rp30,000, and one mini canele that you can eat the entire thing in one go and doesn’t satisfy both your taste buds and cravings will cost Rp20,000, before tax.

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The price of Jajan Pasar should be the same as European and Eastern Asian desserts, and to achieve that, a higher appreciation towards them should be nurtured.

Last month, I hosted Kepayang’s first-ever Community Hangout for me to take whatever I have built here to the offline world. It’s an event for fellow foodies and other like-minded people to meet and network, and one of the ways is through a tasting session I called ICIP-ICIP (lit. to taste a little bit of everything). In this tasting session, I brought eight different types of Jajan Pasar for everyone to not only try but appreciate deeper by discussing it with the help of a tasting sheet.

At first, I wasn’t sure if people would be as excited and geeky as me to dissect a simple Jajan Pasar; something that is so mundane and you see every day. But seeing how everyone religiously fills out the tasting sheets and shares their opinions and past memories that they had with a particular cake and snack reaffirms my initial intention to encourage people to appreciate Jajan Pasar.

With the surge of superficial food reviews, learning how to critically assess and articulate food’s taste is what we need.

A Tiny Guide to Appreciate Jajan Pasar (Drawn by Chalafabia Haris)

Here are a few of the Jajan Pasar that we tasted:

Onde-onde: Onde-onde has two main components, the shell and the filling. The shell is made by mixing glutinous rice flour and mashed steamed potato which is then fried in low to medium heat. Its filling is made from steamed mung bean, coconut milk, and sometimes pandan and salt.
Kue Ku: Kue Ku is like Onde-onde’s sibling. Its shell is also made from glutinous rice flour and mashed potato, and it’s filled with steamed mung bean. Instead of being fried, Kue Ku is lined with banana leaves and steamed, making it chewier.
Lapis Legit: Lapis Legit is made with multiple thin, and stacked layers of cake. Each layer is individually baked before being carefully added to the growing stack, resulting in a cake that showcases a beautiful striped or layered pattern.
Hunkwe: Hunkwe or Kue Hunkwe is made, just like the name, using hunkwe flour (mung bean flour). Traditionally, it tastes slightly sweet and rather plain, but modern variations incorporate flavours like pandan, jackfruit, and even chocolate. They are boiled over the stove, shaped while it’s hot, and kept in the fridge until set.
Putu Ayu: Putu Ayu is a steamed sponge cake usually made from a mix of rice flour and wheat flour. Its green colour came from pandan, which also contributes to its fragrant and slightly grassy scent. It is topped with grated coconut.
Sarang Semut: Sarang Semut, sometimes known as Bolu Karamel is a chewy cake usually made with sago flour. Its deep and dark colour came from burnt sugar being mixed with the batter, giving it a major caramel flavour. When it’s baked, it develops a porous texture that resembles an ant nest/colony, hence the name.
Gemblong: Essentially, Gemblong is a fried dough that is coated in a golden caramel glaze. The dough is made using glutinous rice flour and shredded coconut, and the glaze is a mix of palm and white sugar.
Dadar Gulung: Dadar Gulung is a rolled thin crepe filled with coconut and palm sugar filling. They are often coloured green from pandan leaves and have a soft and slightly chewy texture.
Kue Talam: Kue Talam is a sweet and slightly savoury steamed cake consisting of two layers. Its base layer is made using sweet potato, sago, rice flour, and hunkwe flour, while its top layer is made using egg and coconut milk.
Bolu Aren: Bolu is a steamed sponge cake that is often made by combining wheat flour and rice flour. A modern version of it usually features brighter coloured batter like pink or green, but in this gula aren version, the use of gula aren (lit. palm sugar) made the colour more natural. Taste-wise, the gula aren adds a more coconutty, savoury, and caramel-like flavour.

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Through this tasting session, we agreed that for Jajan Pasar to compete with today’s modern desserts, we need to pay close attention to a few key factors.

We can’t deny that on top of taste, looks and way of serving also play a crucial part in our eating experience, something that Jajan Pasar could improve. Of course, few innovations have been made before, such as introducing a more modern flavour to traditional cakes. But take Kue Hunkwe for example, the ketan item variant could definitely consider a fresher colour than just murky grey, and it could explore other shapes than just an oblong.

Other than that, Jajan Pasar like Onde-onde and Gemblong is also known to be tricky as they need to be eaten fresh. Like fresh fresh, right from the frying pan. For Onde-onde, serving them fresh will ensure they have the right crispy shell texture and chewy fillings, while for Gemblong, the hot ones will always have a soft yet dense filling and clicky sugar coating. A factor that could make or break the eating experience.

At the end of each tasting session, we did a round of voting to find the crowd’s favourite Jajan Pasar.

Through what I called a Jajan Pasar Showdown, the group put all eight types of Jajan Pasar they tasted before in a random position where they will be paired with another type of Jajan Pasar, almost like a tournament. Well, it’s exactly a tournament. Each round, the group would discuss and vote for one Jajan Pasar they would pass to the next round until we found the winner.

Interestingly, each group voted for a different winner. In Group 1, they voted for Onde-onde as the winner, a very easy decision considering that of ten people, only two voted for the runner-up. Meanwhile, the decision made in Group 2 wasn’t as obvious as in Group 1 as the group were split evenly on choosing between the finalists. But this doesn’t take long for them to finally choose Putu Ayu as the winner.

While Group 1 and Group 2 have different opinions on the best Jajan Pasar, you also need to look closely at the finalists in both groups: they’re both Onde-onde and Putu Ayu. This justifies that both of them are truly a crowd’s favourite.

Did you learn something new today about Jajan Pasar? For my Indonesian readers, do you agree with the winners? Or do you have other thoughts? Comment down below!