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Polish borscht and Swiss fondue;
from pizza and home-style steaks; to crepes and tingling
Thai and Indian curries. Japanese, Korean, French, Mediterranean,
Classical European, Italian, Swiss, Mexican, Spanish,
Moroccan, Brazilian as well as a fabulous choice of fine
dining and ‘fusion’ restaurants, are also
well represented among local eateries.
The comprehensive, opinionated and one-of-a-kind restaurant
review website Bali Eats (www.balieats.com)
maintains detailed listings and reviews of over fifty
food and dining categories, including ethnic restaurants
as wildly diverse as Cuban, Irish and Turkish!
Visiting a restaurant in most western cities often results
in having to endure very ordinary food at excessive prices.
In Bali we are indeed privileged. Even at the island’s
very best dining establishments, the cost of dining is
a fraction of what you would pay in any major city.
The stunning views and serene settings complete with the
famed hospitality and smiles of the staff are all thrown
in for free!
A Moveable Feast of Venues
Between Candidasa in the far-east and Tabanan in the west,
from the southern coastal strip to Lovina in the far north,
Bali offers a mind-stupefying variety of settings that
will hold the interest of convention attendees and make
for indelible travel memories.
Bali boasts continental-style, fully enclosed air-conditioned
boutique restaurants with leather-bound menus; smoky,
convivial, grilled seafood cafes within surround sounds
of the sea; dining venues in the mountains under towering
bamboo groves; or a meal on the edge of a spectacular
river gorge.
Several are designed after the decor of a Balinese court
or Javanese style private home, with distinctive tempoe
doeloe colonial furnishings and intimate, formally dressed
tables with crisp, white linens encompassed by lagoons
and waterfalls.
Restaurants may be located at the bottom of a cliff face
down a long zigzagging stairway or at the end of a 40-metre-long
ironwood quay with outriggers outlined against the sky.
You can be sure of an unforgettable experience wherever
you decide to dine, as Bali has so much to offer catering
to all imaginations within her immense, diverse backdrop.
The Ultimate in Fusion Cuisine
Bali is a microcosm of Indonesia’s great cornucopia
of island cooking traditions. As well as Balinese cuisine,
expect to sample Javanese, Sumatran (Padang), Sumatran
(Sundanese) as well as superb Chinese food. But in terms
of subtlety, variety and creativity - the Balinese use
of spices in the kitchen holds a high rank among Indonesia’s
varied cuisines. It’s also becoming much easier
to find Western-oriented Balinese food. Where else but
Bali would you encounter soups made from green papayas
or banana stems? The freshness of Balinese cuisine, which
is served to the table harvested from the northern hills
straight to the morning markets, makes for taste bud explosions
with an array of flavours.
A restaurant that exemplifies modern, freshly prepared
Balinese-inspired cuisine is Bumbu Bali on the Tanjung
Benoa peninsula. Designed in the style of a traditional
Balinese home compound, this small and intimate restaurant
serves a five-course dinner that incorporates all the
flavours found in such classic Balinese festival dishes
as babi kecap (succulent pork cooked in soy) and bebek
betutu (spiced smoked duck).
A new trend in team building is the cooking class with
a leading chef in a real fine restaurant setting. If you
have the time, the program may even include a visit to
the morning market. A real treat to share with those back
home – your newly honed Balinese cooking skills!
It’s also common for restaurants to include a choice
of vegetarian items on their menus. Chinese-style dishes,
in particular, are quite adaptable and can easily be ordered
without meat. The majority of restaurants have tofu and
high protein tempe (fermented soybean cake) in the kitchen
which they can prepare in very tasty ways. There are also
specific vegetarian restaurants as well as some outstanding
health food eateries.
Bali even has its own enthusiastic and enterprising winemaker
which uses only locally grown grapes from the vineyards
of north Bali.
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the week, often accompanied
by lively theatre or dance troupes that will enhance
the business phase of any gathering and turn the evening
into a total dining-out experience.
Meeting venues range from a simple beach repast to a
more vibrant and worldly new generation of ethnic restaurants.
For special events and meetings, the setting could be
as modest as a stylish café or as opulent as
a regally appointed raja’s court. Bali’s
pace-setting caterers are expert in handling events
and company gatherings in exotic venues where the ambience
is as important as the food.
A culinary event that has great appeal to innovative
event planners is an evening centred on the famed Rijstaffel,
literally from the Dutch expression “rice table”,
an Indonesian smorgasbord made of spiced regional dishes.
This dining experience-cum-cultural event is a legacy
of Dutch colonial times when pomp and ceremony were
the order of the day.
A Nice Place to Unwind
New visitors are quick to discover that there is a vibrant
nightlife in the coastal resorts of southern Bali where
they can find anything from ultra-
casual jazz cafes and upscale hotel lounges with private
air-conditioned VIP rooms, to laid-back outdoor all-day
cafes facing a sandy beach crowded with yoga practitioners,
to sun worshippers and rowdy groups of volleyball and
soccer players.
For the more reflective, what more awesome place to
linger over drinks than one of the dining venues on
the edge of the mammoth Batur volcanic crater?
Bali also has no shortage of straight-to-the-beer places
just to kick back and relax. For some serious non-stop
revelry, the busiest “party” streets are
vibrant Jalan Abimanyu, (also known as Dhyana Pura)
and Jalan Double Six in stylish Seminyak, a short drive
up the road from Kuta, where new cocktail bars and futuristic
music clubs seem to be popping up every month, and the
party continues into the late hours of the morning.
Some of the apparently more reserved restaurants can
also suddenly turn into a happening DJ and dance gathering
where cocktails and drinks flow, and the beautiful people
come out to play. If this might be your scene then you
will kind no shortage of stops to make on Fridays and
Saturday nights, many found on the same strip of Seminyak.
Hipsters gather at the lively jazz clubs of Sanur and
Ubud.
Before the evening really kicks in, roadside stalls
are gathering points for taking in all the visual and
auditory activity of the street. Atmospheric hotel bars
and fantasy garden cafes with candlelit tables, where
casual dress is a given and soft dreamy music perfectly
suits the mood, are also popular end-of-day meeting
venues for martinis or a nice bottle of red from Chile,
Australia or France, or even pop open the bubbly from
Bali, quite light and perfect for the climate.
But if you really want to be in the thick of things
Kuta’s after-dark singles crowd heads for one
of the island’s off-beat discotheques or boisterous
dance bars pulsating with neon, high tech lighting and
kinetic energy.. or a more sophisticated mood can be
found over on the Seminyak side where international
DJ’s spin a variety of tunes from 80’s fun
to the latest ‘cool’ contemporary sounds
– you may even find yourself rubbing shoulders
with an international celebrity, who are often known
to frequent Bali on ‘high’ season, with
very little VIP attention, due to the nonchalant, laid
back atmosphere.
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Bali Unplugged & Laid Back
No matter what kind of band music you’re craving,
Bali’s live music venues have something for everyone:
dynamic hip hop, soulful reggae, laid back world beat,
gritty R & R and punk rock, spicy salsa or smooth
house music playing the old soft rock classics. There
are many local band venues with local bands of often rather
quite remarkable talent. During peak season, there can
be a variety of international guests, be it musicians,
singers or Djs. Found at various venues across the island,
they are something to watch out for – stumbling
by chance upon an impromptu set by Claude Challe makes
for a good as well as memorable start to the evening.
On the other hand, if a quiet game of pool or darts, a
pint of ale, traditional Irish music and some hearty company
are in order, there’s an authentic Irish pub in
Tuban. For virtually any kind of music there’s always
a Bali venue that will arrange a special event with exceptional
live entertainment.
As an added bonus when meeting with friends and colleagues,
Bali’s music venues and relaxed cafes are peerless
places for people-watching, front row seats on the island’s
vibrant and entertaining international tourist culture.
On Bali, where the atmosphere means as much as the meal
and the patrons themselves are very much part of the décor,
come savour a whole world of dining and entertainment
pleasure on one island. On the ‘island of the gods’,
the night is always young.
Selamat makan! Selamat menikmati!
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