When I was a kid in Malang, Jl Sanan was just the street where tempe came from.. everybody knew it, nobody thought much about it. We’d grab fresh tempe wrapped in banana leaves from the neighbourhood, fry it plain with rice, or mash it into tempe penyet - fried tempe, sambal terasi, rice. Done. It was food. Not a health food. Just food.
I lived on that street from the mid-80s through the late 90s. Back then Sanan was synonymous to tempe. The whole kampung felt like a fermentation pot.. in the best way. It was a whole ecosystem.. the tempe makers, and alongside them the people who stocked and sold the soybeans. Keripik tempe existed, but the big oleh-oleh culture came later.. when Malang and Batu grew into proper weekend destinations and people needed something to bring back to Surabaya or Jakarta.
