This post was written in 2007. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
Even if you call it Balinese traditional food, there’s nothing all that special about it. The signature dishes are nasi goreng, which is fried rice, and mie goreng, which is fried noodles, and they taste pretty much the same as the chahan and yakisoba you can easily get in Japan. I had traditional food a few times between bus tours and wondered if that was really all there was to it, so I made a point of visiting a place that does it properly. It’s called Made’s Warung, in Kuta, and it was always packed with people so it was easy to find ^_^; It isn’t a cheap place by local standards, yet there were this many tourists, so it seems to be quite famous.
The inside.
The customers are mostly foreigners. You also spot the occasional Korean honeymoon couple. (In Bali, nearly every couple walking around glued to each other, just the two of them, turned out to be Korean.)
It’s hot, so I have to have a beer. This is Bintang, Bali’s traditional beer.
It’s a bit watery, but that suits the hot climate well. You end up gulping it down like water.
The snack that comes with the beer
Tastes pretty good.
A nasi goreng + gado-gado set.
The portion is quite big. Maybe because it’s fried rice from a place with a good reputation, it tasted great, but you can find fried rice this good in Japan without much trouble. It’s not worth going out of your way for.
The gado-gado spread out.
You put the vegetables dressed in peanut sauce on that cracker and eat them together. A dry, crumbly cracker with rich, sweet peanut sauce… an unexpected combination, but it turned out to be an unexpectedly great pairing.
All that came to about 7,000 won in Korean money, I think. Cheap, right… but considering local prices, I can’t exactly call it cheap. Well… tourists are people who travel to spend money, so I guess I should let this much slide… There was another place said to be cheaper and tastier, but it didn’t fit my route, so I gave up on it this time. If I get another chance, I’d like to take my time and visit them one by one.