Pasar Senggol Indonesian Street Festival

Another weekend. Another festival.

We made a quick jaunt to Frances Street in Randwick, in Sydney's east, for the Pasar Senggol Indonesian Street Festival. The skies were a little patchy at times, but that didn't stop the enthusiasm of families and friends out for a tasty day out.

The Japanese stall at the start of the line was clearly not Indonesian. But the wafting smells of takoyaki and dorayaki on the grill drew us near anyway.


Dorayaki Japanese filled pancakes

Dorayaki are a popular Japanese snack, kind of like a pancake sandwich with various fillings inside. These include chocolate, custard, green tea and red bean which are signified by the specially shaped drizzles on their surface.



The takoyaki were also popular.


Takoyaki with prawns


These are prepared by pouring takoyaki batter into a gem iron tray...


And then twisting and turning the balls until cooked.


We shared a portion of six, garnished with fine bonito shavings and served with skewers as eating implements. Unfortunately ours were a little soggy and undercooked, even though we had had to wait for about ten minutes for them to be cooked.

We also had much fun with a bottle of Japanese lemonade, the kind which has a little glass ball inside that drops into the tunnel within the bottle's neck once you open it. The novelty of the clinking travelling marble soon wore off however when its movement to the bottle lip made drinking the lemonade itself rather cumbersome and difficult.

But back to the food, there were plenty of other snacks on offer:


Indonesian samosas


Sticky rice with chicken and sweet sticky rice cake


Happy baskets

We had these happy baskets, a crispy cup made from a deep-fried wonton sheet, lined with lettuce and topped with cooked vermicelli noodle, chicken, pork floss and sweet chilli sauce. Someone likened it to "Indonesian sang choi bao" which wouldn't be a bad call. Rather simple but quite tasty, and would go down well as a cocktail canape or dinner party appetiser, I think.


Spring rolls and deep fried wonton dumplings


Pandan sticky rice desserts


Indonesian samosa and martabak pancake

Fried foods are my weakness, so I couldn't help sampling a samosa and the martabak pancake. Alas I wasn't much a fan of either. The samosa was a little gluggy with peas and watery potato, the martabak pancake was crisp but the pea omelette inside wasn't quite what I expected.

We also tried lempeh, a homemade sticky rice mixed with chicken breast.


Combro pastel

The dish labelled as combro pastel was the surprise find of the day. M was intrigued by the queue of locals for this dish, and although it was marked as hot, we were surprised to find it completely mild. It seemed that you chose your tofu dumplings either steamed or fried, but we somehow managed to convince our server for a half-portion of each. A thick sauce of satay with mild chilli was then ladled on top, then squirted with a healthy dose of kecap manis.

We all found this super tasty, and the cool wintery day it provided the perfect dose of warming nourishment.


Sticky rice with palm sugar


Fried palm sugar pancakes

I'm not sure what these are called, but boy, were these right up my alley. The pancake was a little chewy with tunnels of air throughout, but the exterior had a sugary crunchy crust to it which had me grinning ear to ear.


Cake ketan hitam

Even before I googled cake ketan hitam, I thought it tasted like a heavier denser chiffon cake with the slight grit of ground black sticky rice. It is a style of chiffon cake, and black sticky rice flour forms the basis of this unusual dessert.



On our way out we grabbed a take-home pack of dorayaki. It's always a pleasure to end the day on something sweet.



Pasar Senggol Indoneseian Street Festival
Frances Street, Randwick, Sydney
Saturday 27 May 2006