Hello Asean Hive Community
I am back again here with a foodie topic. Let's get back to my core here, I am stingy and I love to share my stingy stuff here lol. Today I will share one of my experience in hunting a cheap food for my lunch. Of course this should be the cheapest or one of the cheapest here in my City, Jakarta.
The cheapest lunch you can get is called as Nasi Bungkus, or in English it is wrapped rice. Basically it is a mix rice which rice is mixed with some dishes. The presentation is like this, a paper wrap which some rice inside.
The price is very vary, depends on the dishes you order and how much rice you have. However in general, they are the cheapest among all. Don't talk about saving our planet from plastic, they use plastic bag and anything as long it is cheap.
Getting To The Stall
Because they sell everything in cheap, they must sell their food in a very cheap place. Usually it is hidden on a small alley, or they just park their cart illegally in some unused space.
So I started my journey to their place by walking out from my office area, down to the road. It was a long walk for most Indonesian, but it should be a short one if you are a Japanese. I walked down a stair, crossed the street, walk over a bridge and many more.
I felt like Hattori Hanzo, the journey was exactly the same with their original song which was translated to Indonesian here. I think only Indonesian, Malaysian and some Singaporean can understand the song lol.
There... I saw this cart, my frequently visited cart. It is written Nasi Rames, which means Mix Rice. Lauk Pauk means main and side dishes.
A bit wisdom from me. Let other buy first, make sure the people who eat before you do not die instantly lol. It is important to have their food sold out or having a good sale, that will make them to cook the new one, else they will keep reheat the dishes and that would not be good for the taste and your health too.
So never buy any food from a food stall or food cart that have no visitor or buyer at all. I know this sounds mean, but it is the safety line for you when seeking a very cheap one.
Then make sure the cart is not too dirty. Do not expect them to have a good hygienic level, having a clean cart free from Cockroach and Fly are the most essential one.
A good cart won't be able to sell too many menu because mostlikely this business is one or two people work only. Having too many menu is killing them.
I bought my lunch from this stall, and it costed me 16.000 rupiah or around 0.95 USD. Usually I have my lunch at 1 - 2 USD, but this time it is the cheapest of all.
Inside My Wrapped Rice
I usually ordered a cheap lunch for 1 USD and this time it was 0.95 USD, not much different, right? well it was not like that, this lunch could go for 0.6 USD but I had chicken and omelet as my dishes here.
This was what It looked when I unwrapped their paper bag. Messy, yes it would always be like this, so do not expect some good presentation from any cheap food. They were not designed to look bad because they were no well presented lol.
These were fried grated coconut. It was the main reason why this rice looked so messy and dirty, because the grated coconut was everywhere and made it looked like some garbage.
This was my vegetables, it was a stir-fried mix vegetable with small cut of tofu. I could thank the fried grated coconut to make it looked this way, unidentified lol.
This was the omelet. It looked like just a normal omelet, but it was not some ordinary omelet.
Let's take a peek on the inside. This is not a pure omelet, it is an omelet, but they mix it with some wheat flour dough. It inflated the omelete, making it bigger than a normal one. So I believe it was not an egg omelet, the cook might mix 12-15 eggs then made it into 20 omelet cuts.
Now let see my chicken here. It is an ordinary fried chicken, right?
And let me have my hand closer to the chicken, so I can say this word:
Lol I could eat three to four cuts of them, it was a small chicken and they cut it to 12 parts. A good restaurant will use big chicken and cut it to four part. Anyway small chicken means a chicken that it's carcass has around 600 gram of weight. A big one can have more than 1.2 KG weight.
Anyway, for less than a dollar for a fried chicken and omelet, is definitely a great deal. In some nearby food stalls, it will cost you more than $ 1,75. Yes the portion is ridiculously too small, but it still fit the price.
How about the taste? I would not say it was horrible, I can say it is still acceptable. You can not expect something taste great from a cheap food, they are meant to be affordable, not to have a great taste.
So what do you think about this? Do you think I am overly stingy or it is just a normal thing to do. you can ask your friends who live in Jakarta too, it's hard to get a lunch with this price.
Ok that's all my post today, thanks for stopping by, and have a nice day all!!
Thank you for coming and reading my post. I live in Jakarta, Ex-Capital City of Indonesia. I used to live by making money online, that's why I like being here, on HIVE, and in #PIMP - (Paper In My Pocket) community.
