Great food and beautiful beaches are signatures of Bangka. With everything your taste buds could ask for from casual family eateries, to walk-up roadside snacks to elegant world-class seafood, you’ll never run out new places to enjoy food in Bangka. One of the most popular culinary in Bangka is Lempah Kulat, which is a culinary made of ‘Kulat’ (mushroom/fungus) and usually is cooked with coconut milk.
Kulat means Fungus or mushroom and Pelawan is a name of an endemic local tree. Since the special mushroom grows only during the rainy season and they are hard to find, they worth a lot. The price range of this unique mushroom varies between Rp1,500,000 ($150) and Rp 2,000,000 ($200) per kg, making it affordable only to the wealthy.
In a blind tasting session, a French chef in Jakarta thought it as an expensive imported dried mushroom from France!
You can tell the best quality of Kulat Pelawan by the stem. It should have a long stem that is intact all the way up to the sot cap.
The locals use this mushroom for a special dish called “Lempah Kulat Pelawan”—which is kind of similar to mushroom curry—using ‘kampung chicken’ trimmings from the wing or feet for the stock, making the dish the best curry in Indonesia!
