Food and Hang Out Place

Aglio Olio Spaghetti in Popsteak & Pasta

"It's hard to be a hero with an empty stomach." ―Sanosuke Sagara (Rurouni Kenshin). 

It has been three years for me to live in Surakarta as I have to finish up my college study. My only first impressions of this city were two: one is humid with hot weather (and rarely rain poured), two is this city lacked of urban life. That's not all, because the aggravation of those was I stayed in environment of study-holic.

They were the reasons why it wasn't easy for me to adjust myself being a Surakartan. I'm originally from Bogor and right before I came to this city, I had just finished 3 years of high school in Jakarta. Either the weather or the culture of Bogor and Jakarta are pretty much similar. It's easy to adapt from one to another. Moreover, I loved to hang out in Mall when I used to be a citizen of those two cities. That's only until I arrived in Surakarta that I couldn't live my urban lifestyle anymore.

Surakarta, or famed as Solo (its traditional name) is located in Central Java. This makes the language used in daily amongst the citizens is Javanese. Well, my father's family is Javanese, so it only took some months for me to settle my ears. But my way of living had never been Javanese because of my original address and the way I'd been raised before my living in Solo. The only escapism I could take were being alone, surfing the internet, and going to mall.

Even so, things I said above were only what three years ago this city was about, which was city-less. As time has changed, people and even the city have changed a lot, not to mention that Surakarta has never been too rural at least since my coming. Three years might seem so short, but it has brought a lot of differences. Now Surakarta is neither any longer that arid nor old-fashioned. As a matter of fact, at least now we can find so many places for hanging out, not to mention more campus-mates now have started living stylish life and of hedonism.

So within these past few days, I've been looking around for local food places with one to two friends. Not really restaurant though, but more like cafe. We've got a list of new famous hang out places worth to try. Most of them are paste-based, some others are japanese food and indonesian food or coffee shop.

This is exactly the rapid explosion of youth need. More affordable new local cafes or restaurants easily appear and sporadically the news get broadcasted through social media and mouths-ears.

People nowadays simply like unique menu, not the recipe nor taste but more like the name. Nevertheless, we like to spend our money for atmosphere we can get by paying, either for simply being alone, having quality chit-chat with friends, or even working on assignments (which includes studying). This gets even better when the hang-out places have good interior design of decoration for us to take pictures.

As more new local cafes and restaurants emerge, the need of people is no longer the need to stop hunger of stomach, but the need to indulge the starvation of eyes and tongue. Like what my friends and I did, we tripped from one cafe/restaurant to another and so on within one day. we keep buying foods even though we weren't hungry. Even so, we're not yet satisfied if we haven't yet visited all of those food places. Culinary? I think it's more like social class obligatory.

However, I think it's good to know and try all of those hang out places, because who knows one day we might want to really fulfill the need of feeding in times we must be creative of what we intake to our gastrointestinal system, because diverse in food and taste can heal us from tongue-boredom. To a certain extent, this can be good for psychological health (aye, our appetite most of times depends on our psychological condition).

Lastly, just be careful when you crave too much for food, especially the high calories and fatty ones. Because after all, health is always about how we maintain our metabolic system (oh the medical student hath spoken). People should manage their lifestyles understanding that hypertension, stroke, heart disease, obesity, and other food-related diseases are not nice to experience. We cannot have food tours if we are not mentally and physically healthy, can we?

As a start, try Warung Orange, Popsteak & Pasta, Panties Pizza, Vetto Cafe, Kopi Oey, Edogawa, Oh La Vita, Zeppelin, and Social Kitchen. Of course I have yet more to mention, but perhaps not now, perhaps not here. Moreover, perhaps it's more exciting if you venture for them yourselves.