Must Try Local Dishes in Lombok and the Gili Islands

Part of the Lombok and the Gili Islands travel guide — see every topic in All Lombok and the Gili Islands Guides.

Sasak food has a reputation for heat that it earns. Lombok's cooking uses raw and cooked chilli aggressively, in a way Balinese and Javanese food generally does not, and the signature dishes are built around it. The name of the island is popularly said to derive from the Javanese and Indonesian word for chilli, though linguists point to a Sasak word meaning "straight" instead — either way the association has stuck. Almost all food on Lombok is halal, which is a change from Bali.

Ayam taliwang

The island's emblem: a young chicken, split and flattened, grilled over coconut husk and coated in a paste of dried and fresh chilli, garlic, shallot, shrimp paste, tomato and palm sugar. It originates from the Taliwang area of neighbouring Sumbawa and became Lombok's defining dish. It is served with rice and, traditionally, plecing kangkung — blanched water spinach dressed with a raw sambal of chilli, tomato, shrimp paste and lime, with bean sprouts and grated coconut. The pairing is the standard Lombok meal.

The satays

Sate rembiga is beef marinated in chilli, garlic and palm sugar until it is dark, sweet and genuinely hot, named after a district of Mataram and eaten by the dozen skewers. Sate bulayak is served with bulayak, rice cooked in a spiral of palm leaf that you unwind, and a thick spiced coconut sauce rather than peanut. Sate pusut is minced meat and coconut moulded onto a stick, closer to Bali's sate lilit. All are grilled over charcoal at roadside stalls.

Rice plates and the rest

Nasi balap puyung is the Lombok travelling meal: rice with shredded spicy chicken, fried soybeans, dried squid and sambal, wrapped and sold from a handful of famous warungs near Praya. Sayur ares uses the inner stem of a banana trunk in a spiced coconut broth. Beberuk terong is raw aubergine and long bean in a fierce sambal. Ares and bebalung, a beef rib soup, appear at ceremonies. Almost all of it is 20,000–50,000 rupiah at a warung.

Practical notes

Ask for tidak pedas if you want it mild, and expect that the Sasak baseline is hotter than you mean by it. Almost everything on Lombok is halal, so pork is essentially absent outside the Gilis and Chinese restaurants in Mataram, and alcohol is not served in most local establishments — the Gilis, Senggigi and Kuta are the exceptions. Tap water is not drinkable. And the Gili Islands' food is tourist food at tourist prices; the real Sasak eating is on the main island.

Must Try Local Dishes at a glance

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