P

eople say that you will appreciate your country more once you have ventured abroad. This includes what you have for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

When I am far from home, the one tangible thing that can magically transport me back to the warmth of Indonesia is food. Although I can feel close to family and friends back home via video calls or by checking their latest social media posts, I will only feel that homey warmth directly in my heart while savoring a hot  bowl of sop buntut (oxtail soup).

For my friends at the University of Missouri in the United States, Indonesian food is like a magnet. It will draw them to one place, despite their busy life as grad students. It’s so alluring and addictive that it’s unimaginable for them to decline an invitation for Sunday lunch or dinner by saying something like, “I’ve got homework”. If the invitation comes with mouthwatering pictures of capcay (Chinese stir-fried vegetables) or rawon (black beef soup), the house will fill up in a second.

There is one particular house where I hang out on weekends to cook or work on my assignments. The three-storey house is called “Bass”, simply because it is on Bass Avenue. Five students currently live there, four of whom are pursuing their Ph.Ds in different fields, and each has their own craving for certain Indonesian street foods.

The math student loves fruits and vegetables, but never mentioned anything about this until I heard it from his friends. This avid reader of an extensive array of books always has carrots, mushrooms and bananas on his shopping list. The dishes he holds dearly to his heart include sambal terong (stewed eggplant in chili sauce).

The engineering student and the chemistry student frequently shop for groceries together at a halal food market. It’s apparent that the engineer loves cooking and eating orange chicken, while the chemist is too shy to mention his favorite foods until I ask him. Although he has been away from home since high school, his favorite dishes unmistakably reflect his Indonesian soul: fried rice, chicken satay and bakso (meatballs).

The sociology student buys red kidney beans every time he goes to Walmart. He loves eating the Manado-style brenebon (red bean soup with rich pork broth). The father of two would stand in front of the pork counter for a few minutes, staring at the selection of cuts, and then mutter that he could not wait until his family arrived in the US so that he could devour his wife’s home cooking.

The last student is doing agroforestry research. Although he diligently visits the gym to build his muscles, he will put his high-protein diet on hold when we cook sambal goreng ampela (spicy chicken gizzards with coconut milk). It was when he had a bad cough and mild fever that he said he was craving bak kut sayur asin (sour pork rib soup). And so, despite feeling unwell, he forced himself to get out of bed and drive me to a nearby Asian market to get pickled mustard greens.

You can take these students out of Indonesia, but you cannot pull out their Indonesian roots.

The flavors of Indonesian cuisine can have such strong appeal that even former US president Barack Obama, who lived in Jakarta in 1967, mentioned fried rice and bakso as his childhood favorites. No wonder that he took his family to vacation in Indonesia after he finished his job at the White House.

Yet, unlike Thai cuisine, Indonesian food diplomacy is still far from mature in the US in terms of its renown and availability. Missouri has not one Indonesian restaurant and the closest one is in the Illinois capital of Chicago, which is a six- to seven-hour drive from where I live in Columbia, Missouri.

It’s painful to know that candlenut is not available in this college town of 120,000 people, so if we are lucky, we might find it at a bigger Asian store in the nearby metropolis of St. Louis, which is two hours by car. Otherwise, we will have to rely on the mediocre flavor of instant spice packets to cook our beloved opor ayam (chicken curry). What if the instant spice packets have expired? We’ll just pretend we don’t see it.

With such a low penetration of Indonesia’s food culture, the tantalizing flavors of the archipelago remains under the radar. Since none of my classmates have been to Indonesia, I love watching their expressions when they first try Indonesian food.

The latest and most precious expression came from my friend Anto, an American-Armenian from Los Angeles, California. He had rendang (spicy stewed beef with coconut milk) during a free lunch event hosted by the Missouri Indonesian Student Association to raise awareness and donations for the devastating tsunami in Palu, Central Sulawesi.

“This is 100 percent more delicious than my roasted chicken,” Anto said after downing his rendang and rice, referring to the juicy roasted chicken he cooked for me once.

Maybe it’s about time for someone to open a warung Padang (Padang food eatery) here to embark on the road to real food diplomacy.