Getting a taste of modern Indonesian cuisine in Bali

Satay sticks drenched in peanut sauce. Nasi goreng or fried rice. Babi guling — Bali’s famous suckling pig. These dishes are part and parcel of the Bali holiday experience.

Delicious as they are, they are all cheap and cheerful street food. At the top of the ladder lies modern Indonesian cuisine. Kevindra Soemantri, a restaurant critic in Jakarta who hosted the Indonesian episode of Netflix’s Street Food series describes it not as a fusion of Indonesian and Western food as one may expect but as “a fusion of many different Indonesian cuisines”.

To learn more about it, I visited three of the most popular modern Indonesian cuisine joints in Bali, starting with Kaum, one of a handful of upscale restaurants set inside the iconic Potato Head beach club on Seminyak beach.

KAUM

Kaum’s culinary team have travelled to lesser-known parts of Bali and to the wider archipelago to study the recipes, cooking techniques and ingredients of Indonesia’s ethnic tribes. Taking what they learned, they jazzed it up at laboratory kitchens and created an extensive menu with bespoke cocktails to match.

The babi genyol or flabby pig captures the flavours of a centuries-old ceremonial dish and presents it in bite-size strips of pork cheeks dusted in dried shallots and chillies. It pairs well with the curry temptation cocktail that combines not gooey brown curry sauce as I’d imagined but curry leaf and lemongrass syrup with a citrus vodka kick. Then there’s the lawar bebek, an uptown version of a traditional Balinese meat salad served with duck skin crackling.

Everything that comes out the kitchen at Kaum is sensational, though being islanders, what the chefs here really excel at is seafood like the barramundi fillet marinated with tamarind and turmeric paste based on an old recipe from North Sulawesi. This fish doesn’t just melt in the mouth — it dissolves. And the Jimbaran Bay prawns — another Balinese staple — glazed with a honey-sweetened version of the traditional chilli relish baste, are as good as prawns can get.

Bookings are essential. kaum.com

HOME BY CHEF WAYAN

Much of the menu at Kaum was created by former Potato Head group culinary director Wayan Kresna Yasa. Today he runs a little restaurant with a rustic driftwood motif in Pererenan, a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood on Bali’s south-west coast.

Yasa grew up on Nusa Penida, a satellite island of Bali where until recently the only way to survive was fishing or farming seaweed. The only protein available came from the sea and was used to make staples like “ledok nusa”.

“I love ledok. I grew up eating it,” Yasa says. “It’s a porridge traditionally made from cassava, sweet corn and whatever seafood the cook could get their hands on. In my interpretation, I turned it from a porridge into a risotto and added herbs like lemon basil. I believe I’m the first chef to have ever elevated ledok to the restaurant level. I’m really proud of it,” he says.

Over a 10-course tasting, I eat recipes from Nusa Penida and other parts of Indonesia based on chicken, duck and fish. But the dish that knocks my socks off in terms of flavour and presentation is terong bakar — charred eggplant served in “lodeh”, a slow-simmering coconut sauce.

For bookings visit home-by-chef-wayan.business.site

MIL’S KITCHEN

Set in the hipster haven of Canggu, Mil’s Kitchen in Bali specialises in Indonesian desserts.

I try the cendol panna cotta, which marries the iconic Italian confectionery with es cendol, a much-loved Indonesian street food made from shaved ice, pandan leaves, rice flour and coconut milk.

I also try the corn cheesecake that chef Mili Hendratno says was inspired by the corn on the cob with condensed milk and grated cheese that is sold on thousands of street corners around Indonesia. Instead of condensed milk, the cheesecake is topped with corn ice-cream and drizzled with dulce de leche. It is authentic, delicious, unlike any cheesecake I have had before.

There is one more dessert I must try even though I really don’t want to: the durian creme brulee made with the humid, creamy fruit that is said to taste like heaven but smell like hell. “I make it for locals but surprisingly, some Westerners ask for it, too,” Hendratno says.

As though on cue, a durian dessert is bussed to the neighbouring table of an English couple, and their conversation tells me everything I need to know.

“It smells terrible. I feel like gagging,” the lady says.

“I don’t know,” the bloke replies, shovelling a spoon into his mouth. “I kind of like it.”

For bookings. linktr.ee/mil.s_bali