Manado – the capital city of North Sulawesi, Indonesia – is not only about marine wonders. Its cuisine has also enjoyed growing popularity in the past several years, especially in major cities

Best Manado Recipes

Manadonese food has become famous for its rich flavor and color. Madanonese dishes are famous for their hot spices. The most ordered dish is fish, freshly caught from the sea, which is either barbequed or fried, and taken with a side dish of “sambal” or chili sauce mixed with fine cuts of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and shallots.

Manado Porridge

The Manado porridge (bubur Manado) is a favorite of the locals.

Manado porridge is a much-loved breakfast dish for many Minahasa. It is basically a rice porridge in fish soup with fried salted fish (usually tuna), thinly sliced egg and an assortment of vegetables such as string beans, sweet potatoes, basil, watercress, yellow squash, red onion, tomatoes, red pepper, corn and spinach, spiced with salt, crushed ginger, lemongrass, and lime juice.

Klappertaart

For dessert, best known is the “klappertaart” or coconut cake, which is a sweet pie filled with soft egg white flour and long slivers of yummy young freshly cut coconut meat.

Three dishes: perkedel jagung, a corn cake; ikan woku belanga, a red snapper fillet with sauce and lemongrass foam; and for dessert, klappertaart, a pudding made from a young coconut.

There are some traditional ingredients with more natural alternatives. In the version of the famous Manadonese sambal dabu-dabu, a salsa made with tomatoes and bird’s eye chilies includes some virgin olive oil instead of just oil, resulting in a lighter, fresher taste.

Paniki

Another food you should try is Paniki. The exotic Paniki itself was very tasty.

The texture of the meat was soft, similar to the texture of fish. And wings tasted like mushrooms. All the soft hairs on the bat, the head, and the contents of its stomach had been carefully removed. It was then boiled in high heat for half an hour and fried in rica-rica seasoning, which is an aromatic Madonese spicy sauce consisting of a blend of extremely hot green bird-eye chilies (cabai rawit), red jalapenos, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, shallots, garlic, ginger, and salt. Devoured together with the Lo Ba and Sayur Bunga Papaya, the dish created a perfect balance of flavor that danced wildly in your mouth.