For many diasporic Indonesians in L.A., some of the best Indonesian food is found in community settings, served after religious services and disseminated through an intricate web of WhatsApp vendors known as rantangan, home caterers who would traditionally share their food in stackable stainless steel lunch pails.
Ismail tells me she used to own an Indonesian restaurant in 2010 in West Covina, but business wasn’t good and she had a brutal commute from Reseda. Luckily, she has built such a name for herself that her clients now order from her directly as rantangan. Ismail announces the dishes on WhatsApp every week, then clients can pick up home-cooked Indonesian meals. She says business has been particularly good during the pandemic, when housewives are sick of cooking.
An attendee dresses an order of bakso from chef Ibu Fify Hendro of Bumbu Dapur during the Christmas bazaar. In 2015, I went back briefly to Indonesia to collect my things and say goodbye, not knowing when I would return. I stayed in my former home in central Jakarta, not a luxury high-rise that oil executives or embassy folks lived in but a well-appointed family home, prone to leaks when it rained, near a wet market.
not far from the Indonesian Consulate. All roads lead to Pak Dwirana Satyavat, a leader of the mosque and head of the Indonesia Muslim Foundation, as many have mentioned him to me during my reporting. For the Southern California Indonesian community, it truly is a small world.In recent decades, religion has been divisive in Indonesian politics, causing a ripple effect throughout the country.
Gathering together isn’t limited to just Indonesians; Satyavat tells me that Latino and Bangladeshi Muslims also worship at the mosque, joining prayer and using the facilities. “If you’re not Indonesian and you come to the masjid, that’s fine with us,” he says.
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