Time for Batavian Food: Soto Tangkar & Sate Kuah Pak H. Diding

There is always more than one good food in one place. Like in Pasar Pagi Asemka. After trying the legendary Nasi Tim, we looked for another food. Not far from the market building there is a place that sells soto.

We could say that soto is like a soup mixed with so many spices and ingredients. There are a lot of Soto from Indonesia, soto Betawi, soto Medan, soto Lamongan, and people from Makassar call it coto. And every single kind of these sotos has its own taste. 

In Pasar Pagi Asemka, we tried this one soto, Soto Tangkar. Like Soto Betawi, this dish is from Betawi too, or we could say it is a Batavian food. But, you can hardly find the dish in Jakarta since Soto Tangkar is less popular than Soto Betawi. 

Other than the popularity, there also some differences about these two dishes. First is the color of the soup. You may see that Soto Tangkar has strong yellow color but Soto Betawi has milky color. Another difference is the spice that used in the dish, Soto Tangkar has more spices. 

In Pasar Pagi Asemka, there is one place that sells the dish, 'Soto Tangkar & Sate Kuah Daging Sapi "Aneka Sari" Pak H. Diding.' The name of the place has already told us what they sell. Soto Tangkar and Sate Kuah.

Pak H. Diding started selling Soto Tangkar since 1960s. But he open this place in 1970s. There is only one dish at first, but Pak H. Diding invented a new dish accidentally, Sate Kuah. After that, he has two menus here. 

Coming to the place, we decided to get one portion of Soto Tangkar and two skewers of Sate Kuah. Yes, we were still full after having Nasi Tim. 

It did not take a long time to have the dish on our table. After waiting in a few minutes, the soto came and the sate a little bit later. Soto Tangkar has a tempting smell, Maybe it is because of the spices. The soup of the soto was not too thick. In the soup there are some beef dice, fresh tomatoes, and other ingredients. 

The taste of the soto was quite light and a bit sweet because the sweet soy sauce had already been poured. I myself (Roria) prefer food without sweet soy sauce since the soy sauce will dominate the dish and i can not really feel the original taste. But, even though there is already sweet soy sauce in it, I still think this dish is good.

We assumed that the soto would taste like sate Madura because they use sweet soy sauce. But we were wrong. It tastes completely different, it looks like they use some special ingredients because the taste is quite unique. 

There is no rule how to eat the Sate. But since it is called Sate Kuah, we think it would taste better to dip the sate into the soto before putting it into our mouth. And yes, it did taste good. The soup of the soto mixed really well with the sate's spices. Even though the sate had already been dipped, we were still able to feel the crispiness of the sate. 

As a big fan of street food, we would recommend you to go to this place. But, if you have weak stomach or western stomach, you should find another place to have Soto Tangkar. It is because this place is quite messy. There are meat all over the table where they prepare the dish. For some people, this mess is fine, for some people this mess can not be tolerated. 

The sate is cooked on different station. It is cooked outside the place to avoid the smoke fills the room. Even though there has not been new people coming, they will keep cooking the sate and save it in a box. When people come, they only need to reheat the sate. 

These two menus has quite good price. Soto Tangkar only cost us Rp 18.000,- without rice. If you want to have rice, you can have it for Rp 4.000,- per portion. Sate Kuah also comes in a good price. For each skewer, you only need to pay Rp 3.000,- or Rp 15.000,- per portion with 5 skewers.