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Indonesian food are delicious and the country population are huge but yet relatively unknown outside Indonesia. So yeah the power of marketing and deliberate sm

by matz1 8y ago

Indonesian food are delicious and the country population are huge but yet relatively unknown outside Indonesia. So yeah the power of marketing and deliberate smart plan can't be underestimated.

amitparikh 8y ago
I will briefly add that Indonesian food is massively popular in the Netherlands ("East Indies" being a former colony). Rijstaffel [1] -- literally, "rice table" -- is a national specialty that is celebrated by the Dutch, although I will admit that the history of the meal is rooted in that former colonialism. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel
- matz1 8y ago
  Well, Netherlands is a special case, of course. But relatively unknown compare to korea/thai/japan. These country population is much smaller than indonesia yet their cuisine is everywhere.
syllogism 8y ago
Indonesian food is definitely popular in Australia as well. My pet theory: foreign cuisines do better when there are clear boundaries. There's sort of a continuum between Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean cuisines, which then overlap somewhat with Cantonese. This makes it harder for foreigners to find the cuisine memorable. The boundaries get blurred further because in many places, it makes sense for an Indonesian or Malaysian family to just call their restaurant Chinese or "Asian", and then offer a mix of the most popular dishes. Thai cuisine overlaps with Laotian and I guess probably Burmese cuisine a bit, but it's otherwise very distinctive --- and it's not like there are many Laotian or Burmese restaurants around.
jasonkester 8y ago
This one is pretty easy to see the reason for if you go to a random tourist restaurant in each country. In Thailand, you get four pages of Thai food, going way deeper in variety than you ever see exported. Enough that you could eat there every day and not feel the need to flip to that last page full of Pizzas and spaghetti bolognese. In Indonesia, though, you get Nasi Goreng, Mee Goreng, and if you're really lucky a single curry, before learning about their wood-fired pizzas and other western junk. So you can go there for a month and come back having eaten a lifetime's worth of salty noodles, but not really learning anything about all the other good food you can get there. It's pretty rare that I choose Indonesian over Thai, when I have the choice.

by matz1 8y ago

Indonesian food are delicious and the country population are huge but yet relatively unknown outside Indonesia. So yeah the power of marketing and deliberate smart plan can't be underestimated.

amitparikh 8y ago

I will briefly add that Indonesian food is massively popular in the Netherlands ("East Indies" being a former colony). Rijstaffel [1] -- literally, "rice table" -- is a national specialty that is celebrated by the Dutch, although I will admit that the history of the meal is rooted in that former colonialism. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel

matz1 8y ago
Well, Netherlands is a special case, of course. But relatively unknown compare to korea/thai/japan. These country population is much smaller than indonesia yet their cuisine is everywhere.

syllogism 8y ago

Indonesian food is definitely popular in Australia as well. My pet theory: foreign cuisines do better when there are clear boundaries. There's sort of a continuum between Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean cuisines, which then overlap somewhat with Cantonese. This makes it harder for foreigners to find the cuisine memorable. The boundaries get blurred further because in many places, it makes sense for an Indonesian or Malaysian family to just call their restaurant Chinese or "Asian", and then offer a mix of the most popular dishes. Thai cuisine overlaps with Laotian and I guess probably Burmese cuisine a bit, but it's otherwise very distinctive --- and it's not like there are many Laotian or Burmese restaurants around.

jasonkester 8y ago

This one is pretty easy to see the reason for if you go to a random tourist restaurant in each country. In Thailand, you get four pages of Thai food, going way deeper in variety than you ever see exported. Enough that you could eat there every day and not feel the need to flip to that last page full of Pizzas and spaghetti bolognese. In Indonesia, though, you get Nasi Goreng, Mee Goreng, and if you're really lucky a single curry, before learning about their wood-fired pizzas and other western junk. So you can go there for a month and come back having eaten a lifetime's worth of salty noodles, but not really learning anything about all the other good food you can get there. It's pretty rare that I choose Indonesian over Thai, when I have the choice.