Java's street-food capital — rawon, rujak cingur, and the heroes of 1945
Surabaya is Indonesia's second-largest city and the undisputed street-food capital of Java — a port city of 3 million on Java's northeastern coast where the food is bolder and less internationally known than Jakarta's or Bali's. Rawon (a jet-black beef soup with dark kluwek nut paste — one of the world's most unusual broths by colour and depth), rujak cingur (a salad of vegetables, tofu, and boiled cow's snout in peanut-petis sauce), and lontong balap (pressed rice cakes with tofu and fermented shrimp paste) are resolutely Javanese. The city also has the best Dutch colonial architecture in Ja…
Surabaya has been a major port since the Majapahit Empire (13th–15th century). The Battle of Surabaya on November 10, 1945 — when Indonesian independence fighters held the city against British and Dutch forces for three weeks — is commemorated as Heroes Day (Hari Pahlawan) across Indonesia, the defining moment of Indonesian nationalism. The Kota Lama (Old Town) district preserves extraordinary Dutch colonial VOC-era architecture in varying states of ruin and preservation.