Indonesia Street Eats: Soto Ayam Tidar (Surabaya)
There are few better ways to spend your time in Surabaya than eating your heart out at a street side dive late at night. When my cousins were visiting from Singapore, we did just that. A bowl of Soto Ayam (chicken turmeric soup) on the side of the road, wooden benches, old style glass soda bottles. Tropical heat with a side of night breeze mixed in with street fumes. This is Soto Ayam & STMJ Tidar, a street stall on a street called Tidar.
Soto ayam is a chicken soup made with turmeric, ginger, curcuma, galangal, and more. At Soto Ayam Tidar, the soup is filled with chicken (ayam kampung, aka "village chicken" which is much more flavorful than the farmed kind) and you can choose between meat, skin, or offals, rice noodles, and egg. The best one to get at this place is the soft boiled egg but they were out that night. It's also served with rice either in the soup or on the side.