C

em>Can rendang (beef simmered in coconut milk and spices) and nasi goreng (fried rice), once voted the best food in the world, help improve Indonesia’s brand among the world’s citizens?

Diplomats believe the answer is yes and they are now preparing to launch a major culinary diplomatic assault to win the hearts and minds of foreigners and bring the country into the spotlight.

The idea was floated when 134 envoys gathered in Jakarta on Thursday to attend a four-day coordination meeting with various stakeholders such as the Finance Ministry, the Trade Ministry and the National Police.

“There was a recommendation that representatives should engage in culinary diplomacy,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said.

“They were asked to showcase Indonesia’s fine dining or street food.”

The proposal was made amid concerns that Indonesia remains unknown despite being the fourth most populous country and having undertaken major responsibilities on the global stage.

Arrmanatha said the envoys welcomed the recommendations and pledged to foster culinary diplomacy around the world by exploring economic or investment opportunities for restaurateurs.

They have been asked, for example, to hold Indonesian food festivals abroad or set up Indonesian culinary stalls at world food festivals to open up opportunities.

“We hope that through food, people around the world will at least look for information about Indonesia and are then interested in visiting the country,” he said.

Culinary diplomacy, also known as gastrodiplomacy, has been practised by many countries, including Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia.

Indonesian envoys have now put culinary diplomacy on their agenda, Arrmanatha claimed. However, he added, the measures had yet to be intensified because “Indonesian cuisine is so diverse that we still do not know which dishes can be used to refer to Indonesia.”

The Foreign Ministry is currently working with the Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf) to determine the dishes that would represent Indonesia.

Last year, Bekraf said it had identified soto (soup) as an icon of Indonesian cuisine, as across the archipelago there are a plethora of different soto dishes, from soto Betawi, to sroto and tauto.

Government officials, Arrmanatha said, expected that in the long term culinary diplomacy would help boost Indonesia’s exports of spices, sauces, or other food commodities if more and more restaurants or families abroad were able to cook Indonesian dishes.

In the Netherlands, there are currently 400 restaurants dedicated to serving authentic Indonesian dishes, said Indonesian Ambassador to the Netherlands I Gusti Agung Wesaka Pujato. He added there were around 2,000 Asian restaurants that include Indonesian cuisine on the menu.

Even street food, like martabak (sweet or savory pancake) and pisang goreng (fried banana), was the most-awaited dish at a food festival in Amsterdam, he said.

“Most Dutch are familiar with Indonesian flavors […] because of historical relations,” he said. “However, we cannot take that for granted as most of the Dutch who like Indonesian food are from the older generation.”

But in other countries, Indonesian food is a rarity.

Indonesian Ambassador to Canada Teuku Faizasyah said Indonesian food was far less well known than Thai or Japanese food.

Nonetheless, Indonesian communities in Ottawa at times sold their traditional food in the city and there were a lot of people buying it, he said.

“Looking for authentic Indonesian spices is very difficult there,” Faizasyah said. “We [the embassy] are going to intensify introducing Indonesian food starting with our guesthouse by serving state guests with such dishes.”