From Stone Carvings to Dinner Plates: Borobudur’s Culinary Legacy Brought to Life

via Gastro Obscura, 07 March 2024: The Indonesian Gastronomy Community (IGC) has launched “Gastronosia: From Borobudur to the World,” a series of events that transform the rich stone reliefs of Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist monument, into an immersive dining experience. These events, which culminated in 2023, drew on the monument’s detailed depictions of ninth-century life to recreate the foods and feasts of Java’s ancient Mataram kingdom, highlighting the cultural and historical significance of Indonesian cuisine on a global stage.

Though Buddhists make up less than one percent of Indonesia’s population today, Borobudur still functions as a holy site of pilgrimage, as well as a popular tourist destination. But for the Indonesian Gastronomy Community (IGC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating Indonesian food culture, Borobudur is “not just a temple that people can visit,” says IGC chair Ria Musiawan. The structure’s meticulous relief carvings, which depict scenes of daily life for all levels of ninth-century Javanese society, provide a vital source of information about the people who created it. Borobudur can tell us how the inhabitants of Java’s ancient Mataram kingdom lived, worked, worshiped, and—as the IGC demonstrated in an event series that ended in 2023—ate.

The IGC sees food as a way to unite Indonesians, but the organization also considers international gastrodiplomacy as a part of their mission. Globally, Indonesian food is less well-known than other Southeast Asian cuisines, but the country’s government has recently made efforts to boost its reputation, declaring not one, but five official national dishes in 2018. To promote Indonesian cuisine, the IGC organizes online and in-person events based around both modern and historical Indonesian food. In 2022, they launched an educational series entitled Gastronosia: From Borobudur to the World. The first event in the series was a virtual talk, but subsequent dates included in-person dinners, with a menu inspired by the reliefs of Borobudur and written inscriptions from contemporary Javanese sites.

Source: An Indonesian Dinner Series Brought Borobudur’s Stone Reliefs to Life – Gastro Obscura