Indonesian Vegemite chicken might sound like a bad Tiktok trend. In reality, it’s a recipe from 1954 and an early example of Indonesian culinary creativity in Australia. In her memoir Spice of Life, Syahisti Abdurrachman, a former radio broadcaster who worked for Radio Australia in Melbourne in the 1950s, wrote about craving semur ayam, an Indonesian-Dutch stewed chicken with kecap manis. Unable to find the sweet soy sauce, she made her own by blending brown sugar with the most potent source of umami she could find in Australia: Vegemite.

Seventy years on, this adaptative ethos is thriving all over Melbourne, creating what could be called Australian Indonesian cuisine. Recently, Lygon Street, Carlton has emerged as an unlikely hub for this evolving tradition. A walk down the street today features the expected aroma of pizza, but also the distinct scents of galangal and lemongrass, particularly near the intersection with Queensberry Street.

The transformation of Lygon Street seems to have happened slowly, then all at once. In 2019, the 130th outlet of Indonesian fried chicken franchise D’Penyetz opened on the block, with sister dessert chain D’Cendol sharing the same shopfront. They were on their own until 2023, when full-service restaurant Kantin, pancake shop Martabak Pecenongan 78 and gelateria Beku joined the pesta (party). Waroeng SS landed the following year, closer to Cinema Nova.

While Australians who don’t have any ties to Indonesia have long been familiar with crowd-pleasers like nasi goreng, beef rendang, chicken satay and gado-gado, restaurants like these have recently begun presenting a broader picture of the cuisine. They’re showing that Indonesia is home to one of the world’s most vibrant food cultures – and some of the world’s pickiest eaters. Someone I know from Central Java refuses to visit a specific Indonesian restaurant in Melbourne because “it’s too East Javanese”. That’s not to say these restaurants have simply transplanted traditional warung food into Australian soil. Instead, they represent something more nuanced: a culinary conversation between Indonesian heritage and Australian context.

The grilled beef ribs at Kantin, deeply savoury with caramelised kecap manis and spices, are Indonesian in preparation. But the dish emerged not from tradition, but pragmatic adaptation and a recognition of Australia’s exceptional beef – leading to something quite unique.

Grilled beef ribs are common in Indonesia. But in the same way the beef rendang you find in Melbourne is typically softer and not as dry as what you find in Indonesia, Kantin’s beef ribs are much meatier than the ones you get in Indonesia.

Kantin ventures further away from tradition with its rujak. Here, the fruit salad is made with apple and cucumber rather than the usual starfruit and guava.

D’Penyetz makes a version of ayam penyet (smashed fried chicken) that also bridges Indonesian tradition and Australian ingredients. Ayam penyet, which gained popularity in the early 2000s, evolved from batterless fried chicken in East Java – a province renowned for intensely spicy and savoury dishes. Traditionally, the chicken is boiled with spices, deep-fried, then smashed and slathered with spicy sambal. The smashing tenderises the meat and creates more surface area for the sambal to cling to.

You won’t see smashing at D’Penyetz, however. Chicken raised in Indonesia is usually small with fibrous, flavourful meat perfect for smashing. Australian chicken demands different treatment.

“If we do it with soft and meaty Australian chicken, it will just look like a shattered piece of meat and bone,” says Andy Indra, who brought the franchise to Australia with partner Juli Santoso. Their take on ayam penyet is batterless, with crispy skin. They up the crunch with crumbs made from the spices used to boil the chicken. (This differs from ayam geprek, where the chicken is boneless and battered, allowing it to be smashed and mixed with sambal without compromising on appearance.) Like the beef ribs at Kantin, the sambals are what makes it Indonesian. There are nine varieties to choose from, including the new sambal embe, a Balinese number with fried shallots, and sambal kecombrang made with citrusy torch ginger flowers.

Waroeng SS goes even further, serving an impressive 20 sambals. Executives from the major Indonesian chain spent months testing ingredients, specifically travelling to Melbourne to source components for their test kitchen in Indonesia.

“The central team took a long time to experiment with the flavours. It was a lengthy process of trial and error to create authenticity on three levels: taste, portion sizes, and presentation,” Michael Samsir, consultant for the Melbourne branch, tells Broadsheet.

This battle of the sambals on Lygon Street captures the essence of an authentic Indonesian food experience, where establishments on the same street succeed or fail by the quality of their sambals.

For Indonesian restaurateurs, the strip offers a compelling mix of opportunity and risk. “We chose Lygon Street partly because it’s close to the city without the city rent price tag. It’s also near Melbourne Uni, RMIT and surrounded by both residential and offices,” Kantin owner Chan (who asked to be identified by his first name) says. “[But it’s] a tough spot. High competition, rent, cost pressures, and a crowd that knows what they want and what they want to pay.”

Indeed, the block where Kantin and D’Penyetz are located is in the top 25 highest turnover rates for food businesses in Melbourne – the only block outside of CBD and Docklands – according to analysis of the City of Melbourne’s Census of Land Use and Employment data from 2002 to 2023. Tambo Ciek, a popular Padangnese chain with multiple locations across Melbourne, only lasted a year here.

But if history tells us anything, it’s that Indonesians will keep on keeping on. For centuries before the Australian government banned the trade in 1901, Makassan sea cucumber fishermen from Sulawesi seasonally traded with the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land, bringing tamarind – the seeds from which grew into trees that still dot the landscape today. Decades later, Indonesian migrants like Syahisti Abdurrachman, with her Vegemite chicken, have continued this tradition of adaptation and creativity.