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Singapore, March 10, 2010 THE security detail has been planned and city streets are being spruced up. There’s one more task left – to trace the origins of mee bakso. Food is among items being scrutinised in the run-up to US President Barack Obama’s visit to Indonesia on 20 Mar. Indonesian authorities are said to have asked food experts to study how the meatball noodle soup came to be. This is to avoid possible disputes with other countries over who “owns” mee bakso, reported the Jakarta Globe. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s director-general of destination development, Mr Firmansyah Rahim, said: “We had a fight before with Malaysia on cultural products, with each side claiming to own them. We don’t want the same thing to happen again this time.” The Indonesian Association of Mie Bakso Sellers (Apmiso) said recently that its members were ready to create for Mr Obama a bakso recipe that meets international standards. Apmiso chairman Tri Setyo Budiman said: “We’ve worked with at least 10 different industries to prepare ingredients that are hygienic, high quality, safe and tasty.” He said Apmiso will also look for proof that mee bakso is truly an Indonesian dish. Another government official, Mr Damos Agusman, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declared it was safe to label mee bakso as “typically Indonesian,” reported the Jakarta Globe. Mr Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Jakarta, is visiting Indonesia in a bid to forge closer ties. He has shared memories of eating food such as meatball soup, nasi goreng and rambutan during his stay there. Indonesia had a long-running cultural spat with Malaysia over batik. But last September, the United Nations decided to recognise batik as part of Indonesia’s heritage.
