Except in Denpasar, the restaurant business is largely based on tourism,
unlike Jakarta where restaurants are also patronized by locals. A non-tourist
restaurant in Bali's capital city will naturally have plenty of Indonesians
sitting in it. Since Indonesians are fastidious eaters, you can bet it's
good. If you want really authentic Indonesian food, stick to the streets
or eat in warung or night markets, both of which are found even in tourist
areas. Just go around to the back or to the sides of any hotel where all
the service people eat.
The only restaurants where you can make reservations
and use your plastic are expensive four- and five-star hotels. No matter
what the class, many restaurants offer free transport though they may not
advertise the fact. Always call ahead to ask. If you're eating in tourist
restaurants all the time, you need to allow about Rp15,000-20,000 per day
for two people. Don't take it for granted that the bill is correct. If
it is incorrect, it will never be in your favor. Double-check the prices
and add the bill up again. The higher-priced the restaurant is, the more
likely a service charge and tax, varying from 10% to 21%, will be added
to your bill. Hotel restaurants and restaurants at tourist sites invariably
add these charges. If it's not added, please don't tip! It's not expected
and it should not be introduced on Bali. If you feel it's called for, Rp1000
is the absolute maximum you should give.
Public Restaurants
There are hundreds of first-rate restaurants in Denpasar, Sanur, Kuta,
Legian, Candidasa, and Lovina Beach. In both public and hotel restaurants
of southern Bali every sort of international cuisine can be found: Japanese,
French, Italian, Swiss, Mexican (in the Kuta area), Spanish, Moroccan.
When groups of Japanese enter a restaurant, they play Japanese music; when
Americans enter, they play American music.
Some are fantastic people-watching venues
and also serve first-class Indonesian cuisine. Although the competition
in the tourist areas like Kuta and Sanur make for a higher standard of
food, the setting could be drab and noisy, the service slow, their tables
set under bright neon lights. The multitude look, sound, and smell alike
and offer identical menus at identical prices. Ask your hotel's front desk
or the homestay owner where you should eat. Indonesians love to eat and
they'll pinpoint the best places.
When ordering food, many restaurants provide
slips of paper on which to write down your order and the price; this is
a good idea because it prevents misunderstandings. If you don't write your
order down precisely, half the time they'll get it wrong. If there is no
paper or pen, verify your order with the waiter before it goes to the kitchen.
All waiters speak at least some English, and many can get by in Japanese,
French, even Italian. Don't assume that your waiter knows what goes into
a dish; ask the cook instead. If you're allergic to MSG, tell your waiter
"Saya tidak mau aji-no-moto." If you don't, half the time you'll
get MSG in your food. The Chinese, in particular, use a lot of MSG.
Also be prepared for the proper sequence
to be backwards, i.e., main course, then soup, then salad. Often some members
of your party may not receive their food until everyone else has finished.
Typically, what finished cooking first is served first. The only way to
control the order in which the food arrives is to order one item at a time.
One of the hardest things to take, especially
in restaurants with good reputations, is the inconsistency. For example,
one time your order of gado-gado is what it is supposed to be: a warm fresh
vegetable salad with a mild peanut sauce. Another time it's an overcooked
pile of sauteed cabbage topped with a greasy, bland peanut-flavored gravy.
You never know what ingredients you'll find in your dish, what color the
dish will be, or how big the portion. Also hard to predict is the amount
of fat and meat, especially chicken, that goes nasi goreng and mie goreng.
One way to avoid the unpredictable fare is to just stick with simple dishes
like grilled fish with rice and vegetables or soup without MSG. Nasi campur
is a safe bet if you personally pick what goes into this "mixed rice"
dish.
Tourist Restaurants
A tourist restaurant is characterized by menus in English featuring Western-style
dishes. As is the case anywhere, the number of people who patronize the
establishment is an indication of its quality. Restaurants and painting
galleries, particularly those along the tourist corridors, pay tour bus
companies and travel agencies to stop at their establishments on their
tours around the island. Your guide and driver, or the owners of the tour
company, receive a commission for each person they deliver to their doorstep.
One should be wary of the species of tourist
restaurant that serve Balinese/Indonesia/Chinese buffet luncheons. Popular
tourist sites and heavily trafficked tourist routes seem to breed these
restaurants. Since they have you and the rest of the people on your bus
captive, you have no recourse but to eat the awful, tasteless, high-priced
food. The restaurant is only saved by the view. Though many of these roadside
restaurants have truly inspiring and romantic garden settings or are situated
in breezy open-sided pavilions, they tone down or eliminate many of the
"funny-tasting" Indonesian spices in order to make the food more
palatable to Westerners. On the other hand, buffets targeted to the traveler
and put on by certain tourist restaurants of Kuta, Legian, and particularly
Lovina, can be extraordinary good values. Read the advertised menu items
carefully-soy sauce and napkins are not worthy of being included!
The biannual magazine Menu's: The Restaurant
Guide of Bali (Box 2179, Kuta) is a collection of menus from some of the
best restaurants of Bali. Available for Rp2000 at most bookstores, kiosks,
and hotel reception desks, it comes with a convenient restaurant locator
map, index, and food list vocabulary in Indonesian. Each of the restaurants
included have been personally researched and recommended by at least five
people based on quality, atmosphere, cleanliness, service, and originality.
Another honest source of information for the gourmand is Eating Bali: The
Complete Restaurant Guide by Mark Beshara (Times Books International),
which humorously evaluates over 200 restaurants in the island's six tourist
areas. Restaurants are graded on their food, service, atmosphere, sanitation,
and price. Includes maps, photos, plus a list of 59 restaurants to avoid.
The information in this book, published in 1990, is only about 70% accurate.
Hotel Restaurants
The hotel restaurants of Bali are capable of truly gourmet fare. In the
big resort hotels the price of all-you-can-eat breakfasts and dinner buffets,
from Rp15,000 to Rp30,000, is kept reasonable so the restaurant can compete
with outside dining establishments. They run on a very thin margin and
thus are quite a good value.
At elegant hotel restaurants you start the
day off at extravagant breakfast buffets with assorted local and imported
fresh fruit, followed by ham, steak, eggs, croissants, toast, yogurt, coffee
or tea. Almost all the star-hotels put on gigantic dinner buffets in which
a different cuisine is featured every night of the week. Known as "food
entertainment," hotels present a variety in order to hold the interest
and loyalty of hotel guests.
When hotel restaurants are good, they are
very good, serving such international cuisine as marinated dolphinfish,
barbecued prawns, lobster-stuffed red chili peppers, avocados overflowing
with shrimp, mango zabaglione, pineapple flambéed with Grand Marnier
sauce, and huge river crabs with claws the size of lobsters crammed with
extraordinarily delicious sweet fluffy white meat; all are accompanied
by fine imported European and Australian wines. Some hotels offer hot and
cold breakfast and dinner buffets of 50-odd dishes.
In all but the very cheapest and most expensive
hotels, breakfast is included in the price of the room. The lady who runs
your homestay will probably give you fresh fruit, a bottomless pot of good
tea, a thermos of hot water for coffee, and a dish of homemade jajan (cookies
to the Americans, biscuits to the Brits). Unless you say otherwise you'll
be served coffee and tea in glasses filled one-third with sugar and sweet
condensed milk. In the higher cost hotels (US$20-30 and up), you can save
the cost of breakfast (usually charged extra) if you travel with a heating
element and make your coffee or tea and eat baked goods and fruit (bought
the day before) in your hotel room each morning. You can cut down on your
food costs if you buy snacks, drinks, and groceries at a nearby supermarket,
then prepare some of your food in your hotel room or front veranda. Higher-priced
hotels frequently have refrigerators in the rooms.
Ethnic Restaurants
For those who crave a dish cooked in the style of their home country, you
will not be disappointed on Bali. The choice of international cuisine is
unlimited-Bali offers everything from Moroccan couscous and Mexican enchiladas
to Polish borchst and Swiss fondue.
Not all ethnic restaurants are good-some
fall down on the job of re-creating their cuisine on Bali. Really authentic
versions of Italian and French food, for example, are difficult to achieve
when using local ingredients. If it's a pizza or home-style steak you're
looking for, don't be too critical. Fried bread is many restaurants' version
of toast. Salads, as a rule, are not their forte. Balinese banana pancakes
don't contain any leavening, only flour and egg, and taste like extra thick
crepes. Despite its Hindu origins, neither is Bali the place to eat great
homemade curries. "Maharaja Curry" bears about as much resemblance
to curry as Westminster Abbey does to the Taj Mahal. Dozens of restaurants
serve Mexican dishes, but be forewarned that tacos are sometimes nothing
more than Chinese stir-fried vegetables on a big cracker-no relation to
a real taco. Nachos and guacamole are served with krupuk instead of corn
chips. When in doubt, always order food from the restaurant's Indonesian
menu-that they know how to cook well. And you'll have ample opportunity
to try Javanese cooking on Bali, which is perhaps more to the liking of
the Western palate.
Chinese restaurants are generally more expensive
than tourist eating places but offer more variety and culinary sophistication.
Visit Chinese restaurants in a group so that a wide variety of tasty dishes
can be sampled. The Chinese are a little fussy about their meat intake,
taking only small, gourmet-cooked portions, so if you feel that Indonesian
or Balinese food is short on vegetables head for a Chinese restaurant,
which usually serves an abundance of fresh vegetables with their dishes.
A typical Chinese-style restaurant now charges about Rp10,000-15,000 per
person minimum for a large meal, including beer.
Vegetarian
Bali is not Yogyakarta-the vegetarian capital of Indonesia-but in the countryside
you come across amazingly nutritious and tasty vegetarian dishes. All over
Bali you can enjoy bubur sayur bayam (rice porridge with coconut shavings,
coconut cream, chili sauce, and peanut plant leaves) for as little as Rp200.
The little old ladies who sell it come out from 0600 to 0700, then again
from 1400 to 1700. There is health food in restaurants in Kuta, Legian,
Sanur, and Ubud. It's common for restaurants to include many vegetarian
items on their menus. Look for Chinese-style dishes in particular. You
can, in fact, pick almost anything from a menu and get the vegetarian version
by saying (though writing it out is always better) tanpa daging or kurang
daging (without meat) after the name of the item. Example: Nasi goreng
tanpa daging is "nasi goreng without meat." Also teh tanpa gula
means "tea without sugar." The majority of restaurants have tofu
(tahu) and tempe in the kitchen, so just say "Saya mau cap cay tanpa
daging. Sayur-sayuran saja. Boleh pakai tahu atau tempe" ("I
want chop suey without meat. Vegetables only. Please add tofu or tempe").
When ordering nasi campur, go up and point to what you want to make sure
you don't get meat. Don't leave it up to them. Don't hesitate to ask for
more vegetables (tambah lagi means "add more").
Seafood
Though surrounded by sea, the Balinese themselves are not big on seafood;
the catch goes either to the island's canneries or to the local tourist
restaurants. Kuta and Sanur's Chinese restaurants serve the best seafood
on the island.
You should try exotic fish and shellfish
dishes, which are probably more affordable on Bali than in your own country.
Fish and shellfish dinners average Rp10,000-15,000, about half the Singapore
price and about one-third the American or European price. The flipping
wet fish is usually brought to you on a platter for your inspection, then
it is charbroiled and presented to you cooked, tantalizingly tender, spiked
with scallions and slices of lime. You can often get a better price if
you bargain before you even enter the restaurant. Select the fish you want,
then offer 30% less than the price they quote you. You'll probably get
it at around 15% less. Remember: The more fish you buy, the better price
you should get.
Lobster is supposedly the delicacy of the
island; it costs about US$5 per 100 gram. This means a full lobster dinner
with bottle of beer will set you back US$15-20. The Nusa Dua hotels are
the most expensive at about US$6 or US$7 per 100 gram. A better deal is
fresh grilled red snapper, which is firm, fleshy, and tasty.
Fast Food
A relatively new phenomenon are Bali's fast-food restaurants. In spite
of a wonderful native cuisine, you see popping up such outlets as Burger
King (two locales in Kuta), Kentucky Fried Chicken (outlets in Kuta, Legian,
Sanur, and Denpasar), McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Church's Texas Fried Chicken.
There are also two Swenson's and one Pioneer Chicken. For the most part,
these Western franchises cater to Jakartans and other Indonesian "outsiders"
who like to eat "modern."
Night Markets
Open-air pasar malam in Bali's large towns offer a collection of smoky,
ramshackle warung where some of the best food for the money can be had.
A trip into town to eat at the night market-whether in Kuta, Ubud, Bangli,
Gianyar, Singaraja, or Amlapura-makes for a great night out. The visitor
will discover an array of European, Arabian, Chinese, Indian, and local
Indonesian cuisines.
These collections of makeshift foodstalls-poor-men's
restaurants-are aglow with hissing gas lamps, covered by plastic canopies,
and provided with wooden benches or stools. Pure Indonesian and occasionally
Balinese cuisine, including such delicious snacks as krupuk, pisang goreng,
and fried tempeh, are eaten with a cheap aluminum spoon amid much banter
from your fellow diners. You're assured of a genuine and lively atmosphere.
If you're sitting in one foodstall, it doesn't mean you can't also order
from ones nearby. Choose one with the friendliest atmosphere, then walk
around to neighboring warung and order different food treats. If you gesture
to where you're sitting, each vendor will deliver your dish to you. If
you don't speak Bahasa Indonesia, simply point to anything that looks good.
Excellent pasar malam are often in the perimeters
of markets and bus stations. One of the largest is in Denpasar, behind
the parking lot of the multistoried Kumbasari Shopping Complex; other night
markets are at the Suci Bus Station and the Sports Stadium (corner of Jl.
Supratman and Jl. Melati). At night along Jl. Teuku Umar, tent restaurants
open up. Very popular with the locals are such dishes as ayam chi-chi,
grilled fried chicken with lalab (Sundanese salad).
Day Markets
If you prefer to do your own cooking, buy household and kitchen utensils
in the markets along Jl. Gajah Mada in Denpasar, then visit the native
markets for your grocery staples.
While the cattle market (pasar ternak) is
the domain of the men, the everyday village market is the world of women-haggling,
gossiping, cooking, working. Markets in most villages, even the size of
Ubud, take place every three days where you'll see a cornucopia of grains,
beans, seeds, greens, fruit, and pastes of all colors and textures, as
well as typical pasar, and snacks such as klepon, pisang rai, bubur sumsum.
Stands in the markets serve up soups, vegetables, curries, betel nut wrapped
in palm leaf. Great care is taken to make the food attractive so as to
catch the shopper's eye: flowers are strewn over fruit, dishes are brightly
garnished, and green leaves are spread under vegetables. Get there by 0600
with the housewives and pembantus (house-servants) because the best and
freshest produce and the best prices go to the quick and audacious. There
are at least three price levels: the lowest to those in the same kampung,
a higher price to fellow Balinese, and highest of all to the Javanese and
other foreigners who pay a "newcomer's tax" on local goods and
services (don't feel ripped off, it's a negligible amount). Treat bargaining
as entertainment, an enjoyable means of communication.
Supermarkets
At a number of Western-style, air-conditioned supermarkets around the island
you can score such imported and expensive items as peanut butter, jams,
cereal, liquor, Australian T-bone steaks, New Zealand lamb legs, U.S. sirloins
(local meat is too lean and tough), frozen meat, and fresh seafood from
lobster to snapper. Most are laid out like mini-shopping malls. Some even
offer discounted goods, giveaways, and special promotions. Kuta's Galael
Dewata (with a branch on Jl. Bypass in Sanur) has the best deli and wine
selections (bottles of wine start at Rp20,000). There's even a market in
Seminyak near the road down to the Oberoi that's open 24-hours called K-Markt.
It carries deli items like fresh and processed cheeses, fresh baked breads,
dairy products, cereals, biscuits, and beverages. If you're buying biscuits,
nuts, and snacks, get the Indonesian product, which is fresh, delicious,
and cheap. Especially good are the locally produced butter cookies and
shortbreads. All imported fruit is expensive, but if you want oranges or
stone fruit you have no choice in the matter.