South Korea:
Bulgogi
with any grilled meal like that, try out bean sprouts and spinach as a side dish.
doenjang chigae or doenjang guk, a seafood soybean paste soup.
Kim bap-- warm sushi with cooked meat. Not fancy, but I craved it after I left.
Indonesia
sate-- get the Matura kind. This is meat on bamboo skewers served with peanut sauce and sweet soy sauce. Usually it is chicken. Sate kambing made from young goat is also worth trying for another meal.
Fried chicken with nasi uduk (coconut milk rice) and Kankung with tauco (vegetable with fermented soyboean. Javanese food.
Rendang and gulai-- get a plate of this at a Padang/Minang/Minangakabau restaurant. If you get beef rendang, they usually put the yellow chicken gulai sauce on the rice. Gulai is vaguely similar to some versions of Thai yellow curry, depending on the part of Thailand, I gather, but the sauce is less thick. Rendang sometimes get voted the world's most delicious food in polls. Vegies on the side might include some spiced casava leaves (probably tougher than raw collard greens) or cooked jackfruit. Try them all. If they give you a choice go for the jackfruit in that yellow sauce.
Duck egg srikaya. I had this at a high end Padang restaurant in Jakarta called Pagi Sore. This came out with the texture of a quiche or pudding. Srikaya is basically custard that uses coconut milk instead of milk. This spin on it uses richer duck eggs and is green, flavored with pandan leaf.
Rawan, a dark beef soup served in a soup made from a kind of tree nut. Javanese food, I think.
Jantung pisang-- Manado food. Jantung pisang means banana heart and refers to the banana blossom before it turns into bananas and sweetens. They may cook it with pork, white peppers, basil, and all kinds of spices. It's amazing. In some places, they could substitute pork with halal chicken.
If you can get some version of pork and greens Manado style, that's tastes good, but avoid papaya leaves which are incredibly bitter for a bitter green, or you may get culinary PTSD for Manado food.
If you are in Jakarta, ITC next to Mal Ambasador sells it. It is on the bridge between the buildings on maybe the 4th or 5th floor.Brenebon-- Manado food--from a Dutch word for brown bean. What we call red beans. A bowl of beans sounds boring, but they put so many fresh spices in it, I changed my mind about beans. Traditionally served with pork, but you can get it with chicken in Muslim areas if you can find Manado food that has halal options.
Arsik, Batak food. A giant lake Tobah golf fish (a nice fluffy white fish with lots of little bones) covered in leaks, a tasty red sauce. I like it better in Jakarta, because if you eat it around Lake Tobah, you may not be able to taste it because it's like they double the spice.
