The term “Babah” in Java is commonly used to address the half-breed culture that resulted from marriages between the Chinese settlers and the native Javanese women. In the years to follow, this term gradually obtained a broader essence, and was used as well for the “pure” Chinese blood, whose lifestyle had been influenced by local Javanese culture and the Dutch colonial culture in Java. In daily life, the Babah culture in Java is simply a culture that developed from the gradual fusion of three cultures living side by side: the Chinese, the local Javanese and the Dutch. Depending to various aspects, the Babah culture varied, depending on which of the three was strongest and most influential in the local surrounding. The stronger the Dutch influence, the more respectable was a Babah family.
The fused culture includes the dining culture, the dining ritual as well as the choices of the menu. The “best –of” the three cuisines were incorporated into dishes that were gradually altered. These dishes were then known as Babah cuisine. These were dishes that were not the ambitious creations of world-famous gourmet chefs, but more the results of the experiments of the Babah wives (known as Nyonya) as well as the house-cooks and maids (known as Bedienden), who cooked without any previously-documented recipes. The women of the Babah family on the whole had lived to know the rich collection of available spices in the island inside and out. They knew how each spice and each ingredient tasted, and how the various combinations made exotic outcomes. They knew the traditional Javanese food, the European dishes, as well as the original Chinese cuisines. Gradually, they experimented with all the ingredients to produce dishes that “clicked” with the tongue and taste of the mixed-culture family members.
Dapur Babah is a place to eat and drink while remembering the Babah history in Java.
http://www.tuguhotels.com/restaurants/jakarta/dapurbabahelite/
