South Bali, Indonesia Travel Guide
About Getting Around Attractions Hotels Eats & Nightlife Essentials & Practicals
South Bali Eats Overview
Crusoe’s Island restaurant in Bali
I’ll say this: I love Balinese coffee, Kopi Bali. The powdery grounds are put right into hot water and dissolve like magical coffee elixirs. And no, it’s not instant coffee (instant coffee, puke). There’s no filtering. But, Kopi Bali is the best coffee I’ve had.
To be honest, I was expecting a little more exotic food in Bali than I had. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the rice pudding, which was my favorite dish in Bali. I was a bit surprised that Bali offered much of the same kinds of food as you would find in Thailand and the Philippines.
The main types of cuisine fare in Bali are of course rice, which is Indonesia’s staple food. You also will find nasi goreng, which is fried rice and a fried egg, mie goreng, which is fried noodles and eggs, gado gado, an Indonesian salad with peanut sauce, lumpia (sound familiar?), satays and nasi campur, which is steamed rice this time with some sort of meat and vegetables. You like soup? Ah, try the soto ayam soup with vermicelli, eggs and vegetables. Deeelishes!.
As for sweets, I liked the rice pudding, which is made of coconut cream and palm sugar. I loved this. It’s often wrapped in a banana leaf. What else would you expect from a tropical island but fried bananas!
When you order full-on meals, you’ll get a soup and a mish-mash of satays, veggies, rice and more. Oh, the meals usually come with pinkish prawn crackers.
In Bali, you can eat on the streets like you can in most other places in Asia (e.g., Bangkok, Manila). You’ll see street vendors cooking satays and other items. There are upscale, “tablecloth” restaurants. A special restaurant type in Bali is called a warung, which is an open-air, informal, kind of roadside cafe.
In the following pages, I list some restaurants I ate at. Being on your average person’s budget, I stayed away from tourist traps like Ku De Ta in Seminyak.