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Best Swikee in San Francisco

“Water chicken: frog legs renamed. Hokkian wit meets Javanese tables.”

Swikee

What the real thing tastes like

Swikee or Swike is a Chinese Indonesian frog leg dish. The dish can be served as soup, deep fried or stir fried frog legs. Originally a Chinese dish, this dish is popular in Indonesia. The name "Swikee" is from Hokkian dialect (水雞, Pe̍h-ōe-jī: súi-ke) sui (water) and ke (chicken), which is probably a euphemism to refer frogs as "water chicken". It is sometimes identified as a traditional food of Purwodadi, a city in Central Java, and Jatiwangi town in Majalengka, West Java. The main ingredient is frogs' legs (mainly from "green frogs") with the condiments of garlic, ginger and fermented soy paste (tauco), salt, and pepper. Once it is served, fried garlic and chopped celery may be added. Swikee is usually served with plain white steamed rice.

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Swikee arrives as a testament to linguistic creativity—someone in Hokkian-speaking kitchens looked at a frog and decided to call it "water chicken," and the name stuck. Frog legs, pale and delicate, get their backbone from garlic, ginger, and fermented soy paste, whether they're simmered into broth, fried until snapping, or tossed in the wok. This Chinese-origin dish found its home across Indonesia, claimed by towns in Central and West Java as their own, served simply alongside white rice to let the clean, mineral-sweet meat speak.

Order it here when it has

  • multiple preparations (soup, fried, stir-fried)
  • regional significance in Java
  • built on aromatic fundamentals

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