Must Try Local Dishes in Yogyakarta
Part of the Yogyakarta travel guide — see every topic in All Yogyakarta Guides.
Central Javanese cooking is distinctly sweet, and Yogyakarta is its capital. Where Sumatran food is fiery and Balinese food is aromatic, Javanese food leans on palm sugar, sweet soy and slow cooking, and the city's signature dish is the clearest example: gudeg, young jackfruit stewed for six to twelve hours with palm sugar, coconut milk and teak leaves until it turns deep mahogany brown. It divides visitors sharply. Try it once at a proper gudeg house before deciding.
Gudeg, properly
A plate of gudeg arrives as a set: the sweet jackfruit stew, krecek (spicy beef-skin crackling in coconut gravy), a hard-boiled egg stained brown, a piece of chicken and rice. The teak leaves cooked into it are what give the colour. There are two versions — gudeg basah, wet and saucier, and gudeg kering, dry and more concentrated, which travels and is what people take home in a clay pot. Gudeg Yu Djum and Gudeg Pawon are the famous names; Pawon opens around eleven at night and serves from a home kitchen until it runs out, which is an experience in itself.
The other Yogya dishes
Bakpia are small baked pastries filled with sweetened mung bean, and Pathuk is the neighbourhood that makes them — buy them warm from the bakery rather than boxed at the airport. Sate klathak is goat satay skewered on bicycle spokes rather than bamboo, so the metal conducts heat through the meat, and seasoned with nothing but salt; the stalls in Imogiri are the originals. Mie lethek is a dark, chewy noodle made from cassava and wheat, fried over a wood fire. Oseng-oseng mercon is deliberately, aggressively spicy beef — mercon means firecracker.
Everyday eating
Nasi kucing — "cat rice" — is a tiny banana-leaf parcel of rice with a spoonful of something on top, sold at angkringan street carts for a few thousand rupiah alongside skewers you grill yourself over a brazier. It is the student food of a student city and the cheapest good meal in Indonesia. Soto ayam, a turmeric chicken soup, is the standard breakfast. Pecel is blanched vegetables under a spiced peanut sauce. And ayam goreng kalasan is chicken simmered in coconut water and spices before frying, which is a Yogyakarta speciality worth seeking out.
Sweet things and drinks
Wedang ronde is a hot ginger drink with glutinous rice balls filled with peanut, sold from carts on cold evenings — Yogyakarta sits at 110 metres but the nights feel cool after the heat. Kopi joss is the local curiosity: black coffee with a lump of glowing charcoal dropped into it, served at the angkringan carts north of the station. Es dawet is a coconut-milk and palm-sugar drink with green rice-flour jelly. And bakpia aside, the sweet to take home is geplak, a dense coconut-and-sugar sweet from Bantul.
Must Try Local Dishes at a glance
| Signature dish | Gudeg — jackfruit stewed 6–12 h in palm sugar |
|---|---|
| Famous gudeg houses | Yu Djum; Gudeg Pawon (opens ~11pm) |
| Local satay | Sate klathak — goat on bicycle spokes, salt only |
| Cheapest meal | Nasi kucing at an angkringan cart |
| Sweet to take home | Bakpia from Pathuk, bought warm |
| Local curiosity | Kopi joss — coffee with hot charcoal in it |