What is Wedang Ronde and Where to Get It in Magelang
Wedang Ronde Miroso, Magelang. Author photo.
Magelang is a town in Central Java, about an hour north of the more well-known Yogyakarta. It is small, quaint and quiet, a Central Java version of the apocryphal Anytown USA. Humble and still and, yes, kind of boring, Magelang is not without its charms. If you know where to look for them. One of the things I particularly like about Magelang is that you can find a very classic Indonesian-Chinese fusion dish called wedang ronde. Indeed, if Magelang is famous for anything ronde is probably it.
What is wedang ronde? Most people who aren’t from Central Java have probably never heard of it, but it’s a very old timey warm ginger drink served with toasted peanuts, cubed ginger jelly and glutinous rice balls filled with nut paste. In case you are wondering, you eat it with a spoon. Anyway, that’s the way it is served at Ronde Miroso in Magelang, which is a no-frills little shop that appears to have been untouched by the passage of time since, I don’t know, maybe the 1950s.
They also serve simple noodle dishes, tofu marinated in sweet soy sauce, lumpia and sate pisang which is an odd creation where pieces of banana are skewered on a stick and smothered with some kind sweetened coconut/condensed milk paste. I’m not a huge fan, but people in Magelang enjoy it. You can probably get diabetes just from looking at it. Anyway, having ronde at Miroso feels a little bit like getting in a time machine and traveling back to a simpler era, when life was less extravagant and its pleasures more pure.
Apparently the origins of this dish can be traced back to China, which makes perfect sense given the large Chinese population in Magelang. I personally dislike warm drinks, so I used to ask the lady at Miroso to put ice in mine. At first she refused, insisting that it would make my stomach hurt which was and continues to be amusing. If there is one thing about Magelang, it’s that people have been doing things a particular way for a long time, and they don’t see any reason to change them. Putting ice in your ronde? Well, that is the height of shenanigans.
Anyway, whether you like it iced or warm there is something soothing to this ginger drink, especially when consumed as it was meant to be: in a well-worn little shop in the heart of one of Indonesia’s oldest towns. Ronde, like Magelang, is never going to take the world by storm. And that’s exactly the way it should be.
