One of my favorite places we went to for lunch was the Grocer and Grind ((Jl. Kayu Jati 3x Petitenget). It's a super cute bistro/deli that looks like it belongs in LA. It's contemporary with a great menu that ranges from brunch items like eggs benedict to delicious sounding fancy deli sandwiches. I got a iced coffee and the chickpea burger (sounds like something you would get in a trendy LA restaurant, right?). What was amazing was that my iced coffee came with a scoop of ice cream! It was amazing...I want all my coffee to come with ice cream now. Aarti got the eggs florentine and Deanna got the 1/2 and 1/2 which was this bruschetta like dish that came with eggs, avocado and tomato. They got their food first, so we dug in. The eggs florentine came with a really well made hollandaise sauce and the spinach was incredibly fresh. You could tell that it wasn't frozen spinach on there. I was surprised at how good the english muffin was. You wouldn't think that Bali wouldn't have good english muffins but it was nice and soft. The one down fall was that the egg was a bit overcooked and not as runny as it could be. The bruschetta dish was also flavorful but to be honest, I'm not a huge bruschetta fan in general. Like the benedict, the eggs were a bit overpoached on this dish. Of course my dish comes out last but after looking at it, it looked like it was because they literally made the chickpea burger from scratch, so I forgive them. The reason I got it was because it came with avocado, tomato, mixed herbs, organic greens, and tahini dressing (48,000 Rp). I really liked the concept of the burger but there wasn't enough binding to the burger and it just fell apart when I bit into it. I also didn't care for the use of white bread for the bun, but that's not really a huge deal. Also while I love avocado in any form, my avocado slide was a bit under-ripe and crunchy tasting. I know I didn't really make the food sound amazing but I was totally in love with this place and would have gone back and tried something else in a heartbeat.
For dinner, we made a reservation at Sarong (Jl. Petitenget No, 19 x, Kerobokan) which was a 3 minute walk from our hotel. It was probably the fanciest and most luxurious restaurant we went to on our whole trip. The inside decor was breathtaking and very trendy with the largest mirror with I've ever seen by the bar. Despite being very high end, they tried to keep it authentic with tons of beautiful wood carvings everywhere. The food actually leaned more toward Indian than Indonesian. I got the snapper pahadi (165,000 Rp) which was a tandoori style fish that was marinated in a mint coriander yogurt garam green masala. Deanna and Aarti got the paneer tikka stuffed with chutney (93,000 Rp) and the dahl with yellow lentils (75,000 Rp). We also all split a side of fried rice with egg, asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, baby corn, and peas (50,000 Rp). But we first got cocktails and they were quite fancy with giant sprigs of herbs in each of them. While the drinks were good, I was starting to get sick of constantly drinking cocktails with fruit in them. I need to start transitioning to beer! The food was pretty decadent and plated in a fancy manner. The fish was super tender and cooked just right (snapper can be overcooked really easily but this wasn't) and the coriander yogurt was aromatic and the perfect match for the fish. Despite being just a fried rice, I really did enjoy fried rice dish we got a lot. Simple but nicely done. It wasn't greasy like you would get from a Chinese take out. I tried the paneer and lentils as well and they were also delightful to the palate and not super rich tasting. This place is exactly what you would picture when you say "jet-setter". Everyone was dressed up, but in a trendy manner and given the prices (our total bill was $1.3MM Rp) clearly only tourists can afford to go here.
The next day we didn't have a lunch as we filled up on breakfast at the W. I will briefly mention that we did go to the Rock Bar at the Ayana Resort which was also amazing for sunset. We got there around 4:30pm and there was already a line! Who knew I came all the way to Bali just to wait in line for something. But I'm glad we did. You actually have to take an outdoor tram down the rocks to the actual bar and when you get there, the bar is perched on top of the rocks for a gorgeous view of the ocean (seriously, check out their website, they have amazing photos that put my pictures of the place to shame). Yet again, we got fancy cocktails and we were sort of regretting that we hadn't had a snack yet so we got an order of fries and edamame (total bill 215,000 Rp per person). The bar food was fine but I mainly just wanted to plug this place for it's breathtaking views.
For dinner, we decided that we had to take a break for all these fancy pants places and asked our driver to take us to a local noodle place. Deanna was obsessed with getting bakmi goreng, which we strangely enough hadn't had on our trip yet. So our cute driver, Gusti, dropped us off at Mie 88, which is actually local noodle/Chinese food chain. But it was perfect and totally what we were looking for - good, cheap local food. I got their version of shrimp dim sum (10,000 Rp - it was steamed fresh and despite looking a bit suspect was actually very good) and the 88 special noodle (24,000 Rp) which was a basic noodle soup which came with some kind of green (almost like a bok choy) and pork slices - I'm not even sure what makes it "special"but it hit the spot and it made me wish that we had spent more time finding cheap, local places rather than spending so much money of fancy food. But hey, I'm not going to complain at all, I'm in Bali after all! Stay tuned for Part 3 of Seminyak....
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