This post was written in 2007. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
My company sent me on a trip to Bali as a reward for working hard. I’d been collecting info on places worth visiting before I left, but two of the four days were spent on bus tours, so in the end there was only one evening I could actually go out for dinner. Of course, if you only get one dinner in Bali it has to be Mozaic, but the one day I had free happened to be Mozaic’s day off, so I swallowed my tears and looked for somewhere else.
The place I picked was Kafe Warisan, near Seminyak, Bali’s main strip.
I figured it was an easy walk, but it was really tough going. It’s much farther than it looks on the map, and Bali has tons of motorbikes, narrow sidewalks, and no traffic lights at the crosswalks. After walking there once, I swore I’d take a taxi everywhere from then on.
For reference, taxis in Bali are just a little cheaper than in Korea. Short trips go by the meter, and for longer ones you haggle with the driver. There doesn’t seem to be a late-night surcharge, and taxis are everywhere on the street, so there’s no need to call one. Also, flagging one down on the street is a bit cheaper than having the hotel staff call one for you. Even for a distance of under 100 meters they tacked on a premium.
The inside.
Tables with a laid-back feel. They open for dinner at 7 p.m., and since I hadn’t booked, I came a bit early. When I first walked in there was nobody there and I got a little nervous, but after 7 the place filled right up.
This is the view outside.
Not bad.
After putting my name down, I killed time browsing the traditional crafts shop attached to the restaurant. They had necklaces and jewelry, carvings, tableware, furniture and so on, and a lot of the pieces were really gorgeous. Maybe because so many people in Bali work in the arts, there’s great work to be found wherever you go.
At 7 p.m., the dining room from earlier turns into this.
The atmosphere is beyond anything I’d imagined. Fine dining in a foreign land… a truly luxurious evening.
The dining room
The service wasn’t bad either, even if the staff’s English pronunciation was pretty shaky. (They kept pronouncing “half” as “hat,” and it took me about five minutes to figure it out.)
The stars are twinkling in the sky.
It creates a more dazzling, exotic mood than any lighting rig could. I don’t think you could recreate this kind of atmosphere anywhere but Bali.
Since I’d booked, they left a leaf like that at my seat.
The starter.
Not sure what it’s called. It tasted pretty ordinary. It came out before I ordered, so it was a nice little something to nibble on.
Today’s drink: Erdinger Dunkel
Restaurants in Bali generally have very thin wine lists, and since I’d come to eat alone, I didn’t really feel the need to order wine. There was a familiar name on the drinks list I hadn’t seen in ages, so I ordered it. It was delicious, of course ^_^
Bread
The crusty stuff is good. They say it’s hard to find a proper crusty baguette in Asia because Asians don’t like hard bread, but in that sense this place was a Western restaurant made entirely for Westerners.
I was hungry, so after nibbling on the basics I took my time going over the menu. The one problem, if you can call it that, was that I’d shown up knowing nothing about Kafe Warisan beyond what the guidebook said. I assumed there’d be a dinner course like at French places in Japan, but everything was à la carte. -_-;; For a moment I broke into a cold sweat. And when the food came out, it wasn’t in small single portions like in Japan but in huge servings, which I also didn’t expect. I think I ate about one and a half people’s worth.
First, the entrée.
A duck salad with mango sauce; the sauce and the main ingredient pair beautifully and make for a real treat. It was so dark inside that the photos didn’t come out well.
Seafood pasta.
The cooking of the noodles, the freshness of the seafood, the sauce — every single thing was top-notch. Objectively it’s delicious, of course, but the fresh, spicy sauce seemed to heighten the exotic flavor of the Bali trip itself, which made it even more fun. The photo shows a half portion, not a full one. Even the half portion is about the size of a full plate at your average Italian place.
Grilled Tasmanian salmon
The main. Once again, the freshness of the fish and how it went with the sauce were faultless, but I found myself thinking I should have ordered something like the foie gras instead of the salmon.
Homemade mango and raspberry sorbet
I ordered a light dessert. It was above average, but a notch below the level of dessert you’d expect at a typical French restaurant. Well… I guess I should have ordered a different dessert. I fumbled the menu choices a bit this time. It was my first visit, so I had no way of knowing which dishes were good. In situations like this it’s best to go with a group and order lots of different things, but I was short on both time and company and had to pick just a few dishes out of a huge menu, so the odds of a miss were bound to be high.
All that came to about 50,000 won in Korean money. Considering it was proper French food, it would still be good value at twice the price. The atmosphere under a night sky that looks ready to rain stars is magical, too, so (as long as it doesn’t rain) it’d be a great place to take a date you’re trying to win over. That said, I never want to do what I did this time again — rush over alone because I was short on time. Being alone at such a wonderful restaurant was just too lonely.
At 8:30 I wrapped up a lovely meal, dropped by Ku De Ta, a lounge bar with a great vibe on the beach in Seminyak, then partied at the club Embargo in Legian until 3 a.m. before heading back. Bali… it really is a fun place (apart from the way they zero in on Japanese tourists to rip them off, that is). ^_^; If I get another chance, I’d like to go again on my own time.