Breakfast burritos might just be the best burritos, and Mugs Cafe has one of the best in the area.

The term sambal, I knew, referred to the spicy condiments found across Indonesia (and Malaysia and Singapore), and because Indonesia is made up of 17,508 islands with individual culinary traditions, I hoped to encounter and begin to understand an untold diversity of fiery riches.Over the course of two weeks, I'd bounce from the capital, Jakarta, on the island of Java, to paradisiacal Bali, to the tip of Sulawesi, to the hills and forests of North Sumatra, tasting every sambal I could dip a spoon into.

Along the way, perhaps I would start to understand what sambal meant to the 271 million people in this enormous, mostly Muslim nation..I started to get a sense on a stroll through a quiet corner of otherwise frenetic Jakarta, when I glanced inside a tiny storefront and saw sambal being, well, "oeleked"—that is, pounded.In a foot-wide granite mortar called a cobek, an older woman had mostly red chiles, some green ones, shallots, and garlic, which she was mashing nonchalantly with a yard-long wooden pestle called an ulekan.

From this proto-sambal rose the heady and unmistakable fragrance of terasi, a fermented shrimp paste that lends umami depth to dishes across the archipelago.. From this proto-sambal rose the heady and unmistakable fragrance of terasi, a fermented shrimp paste that lends umami depth to dishes across the archipelago..Everywhere I went and ate in Jakarta, there was a version of this sambal, called sambal terasi, often cooked down in oil.

It was there with street-cart satay, and late-night congee, and breakfast fried rice—providing just enough spicy bite to wake up all the other flavors.

As Wongso and others told me, sambal is one of three essential components of a meal, along with rice and krupuk, the fried crackers as airy as cheese puffs.Back in the kitchen at.

, chef Brady Williams harvests the sakura, steeping them in vinegar or smoking salmon over their branches—experiments that find a sweet spot between Japanese and Pacific Northwest flavors.This is a new energy for the historic Canlis.

Founder Peter Canlis' first restaurant was on a beach in Hawaii.When he migrated to the Pacific Northwest in 1950, he settled the landmark in its current home on Queen Anne Hill.