Uploaded June 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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In northeast Sumatra, there's a city called Medan- explained in a popular tourist guidebook with the three-word summary: "don't go here." It's loud, abrasive, and intense, with crumbling infrastructure and a grim reputation. But this reputation has meant that one of the best food cities on Earth has gone unnoticed, and exciting culinary secrets are still hidden in plain sight. In this video we spend a day food-crawling Medan, exploring the city's incredible cuisine and coming to terms with the human toll of the difficulty of life in Indonesia's "Gotham."

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0:00 - Introduction
1:21 - Gotham
4:10 - Soto Kesawan
8:25 - Origins
10:55 - The Fall of Medan
13:31 - Lontong Sayur Pecel
17:32 - Jungle Booked
22:50 - Ghosts
29:31 - Rain
32:05 - The Heaven of Food
34:58 - Nasi Padang
40:05 - The Food City That Doesn't Exist
43:14 - The Neighborhood
46:21 - Lamb Soup Alley
50:33 - The City
55:43 - The Great Equalizer
57:50 - Ucok Durian
59:58 - Conclusion
1:03:42 - Credits and Post-Credits

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Video Credits:

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