When I visited Solo, I've got a chance to meet my old friend who lived there. He was kind enough to accompany me and my colleagues to explore Solo specialties. I loved Solo's food, it's sweet and yummy.
The first lunch was my favourite Timlo, a traditional Solo dish, clear broth soup with Solo sausage, innards part of chicken such as liver and boiled egg cooked with sweet soy sauce. He brought us to the original place of Timlo Sastro, which was popular since years. It's located at the corner next to the landfill garbage, it's difficult to find the parking lot. No aircon inside, just a very simple diner place, but it's very crowded, even some of guests must queue to wait for seat. I really loved it, the taste was so fresh and savory.
Dinner time my friend picked me up at the hotel, he brought me to a very beautiful classic restaurant, called "Goela Klapa" provided Indonesian cuisine. I like the restaurant ambience with its colonial style decoration. I'm confused what to choose, so many things in the menu that I would like to taste. Finally I ordered and "selat solo", beef tenderloin served in thin watery sauce made from a mixture of garlic, vinegar and sweet soya sauce. It is served with boiled egg, and vegetables (carrot, potato, tomato, green bean and lettuce). My friend ordered some side dishes to eat together, e.g. satay, fried banana and tape bakar colenak (grilled cassava). My friend selected roasted rice while his wife preferred mix tofu with egg-rice. I ordered mix ice for dessert, it's very yummy, I love it. The service was good and the food was served and arranged beautifully.
The next day we had lunch at Nini Towonq which's popular of its various yummy shaved ice. As my friend said both "es teler" and "es Nini Thowong" were nice, I ordered both of them, one before lunch and the other for the dessert. Again here I ordered "selat solo", I prefer here for the taste. One of my friend ordered soto (yellow chicken soup), while others ordered gudeg, Javanese cuisine, made from young unripe jack fruit boiled for several hours with palm sugar, and coconut milk, they also loved the taste.
Finally for dinner, my generous friend brought us to "Omah Lawas", Jl. Dr Supomo 55, Solo. It's one of "HIK" (Hidangan Istimewa Kampung) means village foods which's popular lately in Solo. There are so many HIK that were crowded with guests, some of them are provided live music with nice environment to chat and gather with friends of family. They provided many kind of foods, from various rice, many side dishes and beverage with competitive price. You have to queue, taking the plate then select and take the food by yourselves, then asked for the beverage, it would be calculated at the last row by the cashier, depend on what you take. There were various beverage from hot to the cold one. I like the method as it's fast and I could take what I like based on my own portion, not too big size.
It seems that my 2 days culinary experience in Solo is not enough, it's proven that Solo has many delicious foods. You should spend more time to try many restaurants with its specialty. The people in Solo is so creative to follow the modern era, by providing different approach to enjoy the traditional food, such as HIK. Don't forget to taste Solo culinary when you visit.
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