Betawi: Jakarta's Disappearing Indigenous Cuisine

The Betawi people are the indigenous inhabitants of the Jakarta region — descended from the mixed-origin population that developed in and around the VOC's Batavia through 200+ years of intermarriage between Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Chinese, Arab, and European communities. Their food culture — eclectic, bold, oil-forward, deeply flavoured — is one of Indonesia's most interesting regional cuisines and simultaneously the one under the most acute existential pressure: Jakarta's endless expansion has displaced the kampung (village community) contexts in which Betawi food culture was generated and transmitted. By some estimates, less than 15% of Jakarta's current population is ethnically Betawi; their culinary inheritance is increasingly a heritage project rather than a living daily practice.

Masakan Betawi — The Food Culture Being Erased by Its Own City

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