Es teler is an Indonesian cold fruit cocktail drink made with a mixture of fruit, avocado, and young coconut in chilled milk and juice. It is generally served in a container similar to an ice cream sundae cup, and is often eaten with a spoon, or with a spoon and straw to suck up the liquid part of the dish. The use of some soft and gelatinous fruits in es teler makes it a somewhat jelly-like dish with a sweet, drinkable fruity liquid surrounding the jelly and ice. Es Teler is popularly served at an Indonesian fast-food franchise, but now can be found in several countries.
The cocktail is made by combining thin strips of jackfruit and young coconut with avocado cubes, coconut gel cubes, and attap fruit. The fruit sits in a bath of the young coconut syrup and some attap fruit juice that is cooled with crushed ice and sweetened with condensed milk to taste. Usually, this drink is made with canned fruit at home, but some shops advertise their es teler as having fresh fruit in it.
Jackfruit is a medium to large fruit with flesh that can range in texture from custard-like to banana-like. Though the flavor of the jackfruit can be compared to a green banana, some varieties of jackfruit put off a smell while ripening that some find unpleasantly like rotting meat. Some cultures consider this smell pleasant and the fruit a delicacy, while others consider the plant bearing the fruit to be an invasive species.
Attap fruit is the sweet, gelatinous seed of the atap palm, also known as the nipah palm. This fruit is often canned in juice. Young coconut is the fruit of the coconut palm that has been harvested before it hardens into the stringy fruit commonly known as coconut. The fruit is soft because the coconut water that typically fills the center of a coconut has not yet separated from the coconut meat, which makes for softer coconut fruit.
Young coconut can differ, depending on how young the coconut was when it was picked. Es teler usually uses young coconut that has slightly solidified into something called tender coconut. An even younger type of coconut that is picked and eaten when green yields soft, sweet, gelatinous flesh often called coconut jelly.
Es teler is the drink upon which the business of the large fast food chain Es Teler 77™ was built. The drink was invented by Murniati Widjaja, who won a contest to create a national drink for Indonesia. After she won the contest, Murniati Widjaja and her husband opened a business to serve the drink. The small startup eventually grew into a large international franchise chain that serves many drinks and snacks.