It’s rumoured the Michelin Guide has developed an appetite for the world’s biggest archipelagic nation, but there’s reason to believe that Bali, Indonesia’s most famous island, is establishing, stars or no stars, quite a culinary name for itself. Even without Michelin, the iconic Gallic restaurant guide with the three-star rating system, the hits in Bali keep coming. Take the contemporary restaurant Syrco BASE.
It opened in Ubud, the island’s cultural heart, late last year with Netherlands Michelin star-awarded chef Syrco Bakker at the helm. Bakkar has dialled into his Indonesian ancestry to create a first-of-its kind tasting menu from produce sourced solely from Indonesia. At around the same time, long-term Bali chef-restaurateurs Eelke Plasmeijer and Ray Adriansyah opened Ubud’s Locavore NXT, a game-changing conceptual restaurant that has taken the plant-based, minimal-protein approach of their previous restaurant and upsized it.
Its new tasting menu experience goes hi-sci employing lab techniques such as fermentation and distillation to extract pure flavours from local ingredients. Diners roam from a futuristic underground mycelium lab to a roof-covered edible plant garden before sitting in the dining room. Another thriving foodie destination is celeb New York chef Will Goldfarb’s Room4Dessert restaurant, also in Ubud.
It offers a unique dessert-based degustation menu that taps native plants from the restaurant’s own “food forest”. In January, Goldfarb .
