Must Try Local Dishes in Lake Toba
Part of the Lake Toba travel guide — see every topic in All Lake Toba Guides.
Batak food is unlike anything else in Indonesia, for two reasons. First, the Toba Batak are Christian, so pork is central rather than absent — roast pork, pork blood dishes and pig sacrifice at ceremonies. Second, the cuisine is built on andaliman, a wild relative of Sichuan pepper that produces the same tingling numbness on the tongue and is used in almost every signature dish. Add fish from the lake and a strong palm-wine tradition and the result is a genuinely distinct regional cuisine.
Andaliman and the signature dishes
Arsik is the emblem: carp or goldfish from the lake, cooked whole with turmeric, torch ginger, garlic, shallot, chilli and a great deal of andaliman, until the sauce reduces onto the fish. The numbing tingle of the andaliman is the point and it surprises people. Naniura is raw fish cured in acidic asam fruit juice with the same spice base — a Batak ceviche, traditionally reserved for kings. Saksang is minced pork or buffalo cooked with spices and, traditionally, blood.
Pork and ceremony
Because the Toba Batak are Christian, pork appears everywhere and is central to ceremony: pigs are slaughtered at weddings and funerals and portions distributed according to clan relationship in a codified system. Babi panggang Karo from the neighbouring Karo highlands is roast pork served with blood sauce, cassava leaves and rice, and is one of the best things to eat in North Sumatra. Tanggo-tanggo and grilled pork appear at roadside places. For visitors this means a warung here is not the halal default of most of Indonesia.
The lake and the greens
Lake Toba's fish — carp, tilapia and the local ihan batak — are the basis of arsik and are grilled and fried everywhere around the shore. Note that intensive floating-cage aquaculture on the lake has been an environmental issue for years, affecting water quality. Vegetables lean towards cassava leaves, papaya leaves and bitter greens, often cooked with coconut. Mie gomak is the Batak noodle dish, thick spaghetti-like noodles in a spiced coconut broth, sold at markets and roadside stalls for breakfast.
Drinks
Tuak is the palm wine, tapped from the aren palm and lightly fermented, drunk in lapo tuak — simple drinking houses where men gather in the evening, play chess, sing and drink from communal jugs. It is a genuine social institution and visitors who are invited in should go. Sumatran coffee is excellent and local: Lintong arabica is grown on the caldera rim near Lake Toba, and Mandheling and Gayo come from elsewhere in the province. Both are worth carrying home.
Must Try Local Dishes at a glance
| The spice | Andaliman — a wild pepper that numbs like Sichuan pepper |
|---|---|
| Signature dish | Arsik — whole lake fish cooked with andaliman |
| The raw one | Naniura — fish cured in acidic asam fruit |
| Unusual for Indonesia | Pork is central — the Batak are Christian |
| Drinking house | Lapo tuak — palm wine, chess and singing |
| Local coffee | Lintong arabica, grown on the caldera rim |