Surabaya: Where to Eat Rawon and More
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Food is the strongest argument for spending real time in Surabaya rather than treating it as a one-night stopover to Bromo. This is a halal-majority city with a serious warung and street-food culture, built around one throughline flavour: petis, a fermented shrimp paste that turns up across most of the dishes below.
Rawon, the signature dish
A beef soup blackened and flavoured by ground keluak nut, served over rice with bean sprouts, salted egg, krupuk crackers, and fried shallots. It’s historically attested back over a thousand years, and the Surabaya style is the most widely known regional version, rated the world’s best soup by TasteAtlas in 2024. Look for it at any established warung rather than a hotel restaurant version.
Rujak cingur
Surabaya’s boldest local specialty: fruit and vegetables bound in a petis sauce alongside slices of cooked cow snout (cingur). It’s an acquired taste even by Indonesian standards, and worth trying at least once for exactly that reason.
Lontong balap and tahu tek
Both originated in Surabaya. Lontong balap (“racing rice cake”) pairs pressed rice cake with bean sprouts, fried tofu, a black-eyed-pea fritter called lentho, fried shallots, and a petis-heavy sweet soy sauce. Tahu tek is fried tofu and boiled potato with bean sprouts in a petis-spiked peanut sauce, an East Java street-food staple sold across the city.
Sate klopo and the rest
Sate klopo is satay rolled in grated coconut before grilling, a genuine Surabaya specialty rather than the more familiar peanut-sauce version found elsewhere in Indonesia. Semanggi, a clover-leaf salad in peanut sauce, pecel in East Java’s thinner, spicier style, and soto ayam Lamongan, the turmeric chicken soup from a neighbouring town, all round out a typical warung crawl. Es krim Zangrandi, a long-running ice cream parlour often cited in local recommendations, is worth checking is still operating before making a special trip there.
Practical notes
Cash is standard at warungs and street stalls; cards work in malls and hotels. Nobody tips, though some tourist-facing restaurants add a service charge automatically. Stick to busy stalls with high turnover and bottled water, standard food-safety advice anywhere in Indonesia.
For more on the city’s Old Town where much of this street food is concentrated, see our things to do in Surabaya .