Festival Rujak Uleg 2012

Me meters away from Kya-Kya entrance.
Can you see the dragon chinese style entrance gate?
Cannot take better picture because of hundred of people behind me

This afternoon for the first time I joined annual celebration of Surabaya 719^th Anniversary in a traditional food festival which is called Rujak Uleg Festival. The festival is held every year as the city anniversary celebration. Foir this year the festival was located along Jalan Kramat Gantung. This Chinese town is famous since the entrance of the street is marked by two lion and lioness and also a Chinese architectural entrance gate. Yes, the street is more famous to be called Kya-kya.

Another pose

Allright i reached the entrance. Can you see the lion statue?

Now let’s talk about the food. Rujak Uleg is a famous food of Surabaya. It is a boiled vegetable salad with shrimp paste salad dressing. The vegetable used is kangkong, bean sprout, cucumber, and usually sellers add slices of fresh young mango, pineapple, and jicama. The most important additional ingredients is the cow’s lips. The lips is boiled, slices, and put into the salad. Yucky? Well it’s not as bad as you thought, trust me.

photo taken from http://tiny.cc/nr88dw

Now the salad dressing, since this is the crucial part of the food, is a mix of fried peanuts, few slices of young green banana, salt, tamarind water, and shrimp paste. All of the ingredients are grinded and pour on top of the salad. Oh ya I forgot to mention, fried tofu and soybean cake must also be present in the food. Voila..you have rujak uleg.

This is rujak cingur
photo taken from: http://tiny.cc/ag88dw

The festival was started at 1 pm. There are more than 50 participants from sub districts and also other institutions of Surabaya. The best part is the food is free for everyone. No wonder thousands of people flooded the place and I and my sister were really trapped in the middle of bunch of people

After struggling with many people i got my free rujak uleg.
I stole the plate from another participant's table.
The leaf in my hand is later used as the emergency spoon

Each participant worked in group and made the food for the judges and also for the visitors. They wore nice eye catching costumes. Apparently creativity is also the main point to be considered by the judges.

Beautiful participant eh? Didn't have chance to ask from what institution she was.
How could she carry on that huge hair ornament for hours in a hot day?

I love this lady! She's so friendly and i like her outfit

With participants from Suara Surabaya. Suara Surabaya is a famous media in Surabaya. It's my favorite radio station!!

I found her with traditional Surabaya costume on my way home when i was waiting for the bemo

.And the last part is a photograph taken with an unfriendly foreigner. Don't know where she was from. She didn't even answer my question. Maybe she's too tired, at least she was smiling.