Dana and I had walked along both sides of a winding street searching for signs of a cooked lunch. We were not yet at the point of conceding to the local convenience store, but surrender hung near. Our search should have been simple. Most main streets in Indonesia are populated with food stalls, 2-3 restaurants, and a small cavalry of pushcarts.
This main street was a veritable food desert. We found only a tofu wholesaler, a flower shop, two print shops, an auto-repair, and the Road-Out-Of-Town. The two or three restaurants we saw were shuttered. No pushcarts were to be found. This was the Sahara of food; Alfamart its only oasis.
We should have known food would be scarce during the last week of Ramadan. No practicing Muslims may eat or drink during daylight hours. Since roughly 88% of the population is Muslim, food operators really only need to work from 5pm on. We finally found one open restaurant after 30 minutes of searching. A jolly Muslim owner greeted us. Two mangy cats roused from their sunny lounge spots on the floor to separate two fools from their food. The absolute emptiness would normally raise a red flag but for Ramadan.
All the other stereotypical pre-requisites of Asian hole-in-the-wall restaurants presented themselves loudly. Dingy and greasy? Check. Worn furniture? Check. Unknown deposits in the kitchen? Check. I did not check for a bathroom. I’m positive it would have been barely usable if there was one. The multitude of flies sitting on the freezer was slightly alarming. This place overall looked promising according to every standard of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant.
The menu had two choices: sate ayam (sah-TAY ai-YAHM) or gule kambing (goo-LAY kahm-bing). Chicken skewers grilled over coals with sweet peanut sauce is heavenly. I could joyfully thicken my arteries with sate ayam several times a week. The other item was…. something made of / from / with goat. The spirit of adventure cried aloud that I should disregard the lovely in pursuit of mystery, because goat meat. I obeyed her and ordered two portions of gule kambing and rice.
Between Substance and Essence
The gule kambing sat between us, a large tepee of bone wading in a pool of coconut milk and yellow curry. The aroma of cooked goat meat wafted around our table. We portioned out some rice and a spoonful of sauce….delicious. The deep notes of cumin and tumeric girded the gamey flavor of goat, ending in an uplifting tang of ginger, onions, garlic, and chiles. This curry perfectly captured and complemented the essence of goat.
We began to root around with the spoon. The large bone was indeed a three-legged affair, but shaped more like a 3-legged stool than a wishbone. The bone had no openings for marrow. Minute shards of cartilage and meat were at the ends of a bone that was otherwise barren. Excavating the bowl’s bottom yielded soggy onions and several different kinds of chewy bits that could only be some kinds of protein.
The chewy bits had been cut into small, 1 cm. sections. The yellow ones were covered in a viscous film and had the consistency of a soft eraser. The gray bits rimmed with yellow-orange were equally chewy but had the surface texture of microfiber cloth. I immediately thought it might be the goat-equivalent of tripe. Maybe.
We finally found a scrap of muscle, the primary part of the animal that we Americans take for granted as “meat”. It was about 1” x 1” x 0.25”. I took it, split it, and deposited Dana’s half into her bowl. My square centimeter of goat flesh was soft, falling apart in the mouth, made complete by a spoonful of sauce and a bit of rice. It was my small moment of joy made fleeting by the necessity of finishing the rest of it.
We ate our rice, drank the sauce, masticated on the chewy bits, and left the gigantic three-legged bone in the bowl. Our hunger was placated but unsatisfied. I had eaten a bowl of rice saturated with curried goat essence but sparsely populated only with unidentifiable organs.
We paid the jolly owner 50,000 IDR, seemingly too much for our bowl of regrets and unfulfilled promises. To this day I do not know what I actually ate. The best I can say is, “Unidentified goat parts.” Mystery is wonderfully capricious.