Every visitor to the Indies had to – at least once – sample a rijsttafel in one of the bigger hotels. It was recommended by many a travel guide as an attraction. It certainly was an experience: first-rate hotels would have the rijsttafel served by over ten servants, who each presented a different dish, as shown in this photo – taken in Hotel Homann in Bandung in the thirties. Many tourists first needed to acquire a taste for rijsttafel. The writer Justus van Maurik initially did not find the combination of dishes very palatable; he also had his reservations about the excessive use of sambal. Augusta de Wit too wrote about the rijsttafel. It was both the dishes themselves and their abundance (a veritable medieval banquet, she says) that brought home to her that she was in another country. She was not in favour of sambal, either: it burnt terribly. Only when someone advised her to put some salt on her tongue did the pain wear off.
Serving a rijsttafel in the restaurant of Hotel Homann in Bandung, around 1933. [KITLV 182437]