I split food and travel posts into a special new blog URL.

Let's see if it works.

Takeaways from what I could think of as a food research tour (Hong Kong and Indonesia)

At 阿元來了 - 觀塘店 in Hong Kong: Taiwanese-style pork rice, tea egg, bok choy, preserved lemon.

At Suzana Bakery in Surabaya, Indonesia: grated cheese on glazed donuts. They also had a cake thing which ChatGPT accurately suggested (from text description) was a serabi.

Other desserts: crumbled Oreo on roti canai from DEJAVU. Roti bolen from "French Bakery" - these are pastries generally packaged as a gift box with chocolate and banana fillings.

Indomie / Mie Setan from a restaurant named Mie Gacoan. You order a spice level 1–9, and get these wontons.

Ayam Penyet Hijau from Warung Bu Kris. Penyet means the chicken is crushed in the sambal. The restaurant has 3,500 reviews and the location and dish are seen as a Surabaya classic. This dish didn't do it for me, though… was I wrong to get the green sambal?

Tahu telur tek-tek -this is boiled egg, tofu, and some extras (in this case, potato, bean sprouts, shrimp chips) drowning in a peanut / satay sauce. Tek-tek refers to cutting with scissors. Doesn't photograph well. There's one stall which is supposedly very famous, but it was closed.

In Tanjung Pinang I had a similar dish with siomay dumplings in it too - internet suggests this is siomay Bandung

I missed another Surabaya signature dish: bebek goreng (fried duck). I also failed to get kue lapis (a colorful layer cake) here, but did get it in Tanjung Pinang. Are they different by region?

Tempeh mendoan from Sakaw Coffee, Tawangmangu - these are flat tempeh sheets, battered and fried like fish & chips, served with some tangy sauce. I could see this doing well in the US.
After reviewing menu photos online, the other plate was likely nasi gudeg biasa? Each component was pretty unfamiliar.

From Bangun Trisno, it's indomie (with broth this time) and satay kelinci (rabbit satay). This was a specialty of the mountain region, and during busy season it would be sold on the roadside.

Not pictured: ayam palekko, a spicy chicken curry which I got at Reza Coffee & Palekko, Makassar. Mine was pleasantly spicy so they must have gone easy on me. The internet tells me this dish is characteristic of the Bugis people of South Sulawesi.

Maybe some of these dishes will show up in my kitchen and future recipe posts?