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Best Lotek (food) in London
“A vegetable salad with peanut sauce, notably sweeter than pecel, rooted in classical Mataram cuisine.”
What the real thing tastes like
Lotek (alt. spelling: lothek, Javanese: ꦭꦺꦴꦛꦼꦏ꧀) is a Javanese (Indonesian) vegetable-based salad with peanut sauce. While the sauce ingredients are the same with that of pecel, lotek sauce is typically much sweeter to taste, a nod to a classic "Matraman" (adj. belong to the Mataram Sultanate) cuisine. Lotek is popular in the southern parts of Central Java and Yogyakarta, where a sweet taste is traditionally preferred. It may also be called lontong pecel since it is basically lontong and pecel served with krupuk and gorengan.
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Lotek is a Javanese vegetable salad that lives in the sweet end of the peanut sauce spectrum—sweeter than its cousin pecel, a nod to the classical tastes of the Mataram Sultanate. Greens and vegetables meet a peanut sauce with real sugar presence, often served alongside lontong, crispy krupuk, and fried snacks. It's the preferred way of eating in the southern reaches of Central Java and Yogyakarta, where that sweetness isn't an accident—it's tradition.
Order it here when it has
- sweeter sauce than pecel
- served with multiple textures (lontong, krupuk, gorengan)
- regionally significant in Central Java and Yogyakarta
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