Seminyak, Bali - Part 3

Our hotel only came with breakfast for 3 of the 5 nights, so on one of our off-days we walked down the beach and came across La Lucciola (Jl. Kayu Aya).  It's a cute Italian restaurant tucked behind the streets overlooking the beach - a lovely, peaceful setting.  They had a pretty contemporary breakfast menu, I ordered the smoked salmon, dill, cream cheese and green pea omelet and split the hash browns with Deanna.  The omelet was a bit on the dry and overcooked side but the fillings were quite fresh and tasty.  The cream cheese didn't really taste like cream cheese, it just kept the inside more moist.  The hash browns were beautifully presented  as shredded potatoes in a circle puff.   I also loved the fresh homemade jams and jellies they brought for our toast.  That was almost the best part of the entire meal.  All in all, it was a nice relaxing place to have breakfast and the staff was super patient and kind as we kept asking for tons of stuff every 10 minutes and they did it all with a smile.  Total bill was 120,000 Rp per person. 

We had read about a place that had high tea in the afternoon and we thought that it would be fun to try.  I didn't have huge expectations for it as I've been to a few high teas before in my life and thought it was just a snotty British thing with a pot of ok tea and some finger sandwiches.  Little did I know that the place we went to, Biku (Jl. Raya Petitenget No. 888) was AMAZING!  It is this gorgeous tea house that serves an extremely decadent high tea outing and for an extra 80,000 Rp you can get a 15 minute Tarrot card reading (I had never had fortune telling done before and while I do take it with a huge grain of salt she did say some things that shook me).  They had a large variety of fabulous teas to choose from (I got the rose tea which tasted exactly like fresh roses) and we each got a enormous stack of pastries and of course finger sandwiches.  It was a feast that could have fed 15 people.  All the pastries were sweet and delicious but the one that stood out was the buttery biscuit that was served with freshly whipped heavy cream and strawberry jam.  It was INSANELY good.  I mean it was literally like eating sweet crack.  The whipped cream was so fluffy and combined with the sweet jam and butter base, none of us could stop eating them.  The finger sandwiches were good (I love the fact that they come with the crust cut off).  I liked the salmon and cream cheese ones and not a huge fan of the butter and cucumber ones.  There were also mini spinach quiches, scones, chocolate squares and so much more.  Even though it's so un-Asian, it is totally worth the 85,000 Rp.  You don't have to just go for high tea, they also have a very extensive menu of regular non-high tea food, so definitely check it out anytime you want.

I won't spend a lot of time on the Potato Head Beach Club (Jln. Petitenget) but all I will say that it's a beautiful beach club with several pools, lounge chairs and beds, but the food was awful.  I got a nicoise salad and I'm fairly certain it made me sick the next day.  Aarti and Deanna split a pesto pasta that was also terrible, oily, and the pasta was undercooked.  I would recommend this place for drinks but most definitely not for food, although there are 2 other separate restaurants inside the club that we didn't try.

We had our last hurrah dinner at Trattoria (Jln. Lakshmana) which was actually the place we wanted to try on Gili at some point but we didn't make it.  So it was nice that we were able to finally try it before we left.  Bali strangely has a lot of Italian restaurants (I guess who doesn't love Italian food) but luckily this place is owned and run by real Italians.  The place was super crowded when we got there and we were at a table that was literally on top of 2 other tables.  The menu had a lot of traditional Italian food and we ordered a spinach salad with pine nuts and parmesan cheese to start and I had the tagliolini with mixed seafood in tomato sauce.   The spinach salad was fine, I would have preferred a bit more balsamic vinegar on it as the spinach just tasted like it came out of the bag and put on the plate.  Unfortunately I had mixed the pasta up for taglitatelle pasta and was expecting a thick ribbon pasta but instead it was a thinner, spaghetti-like texture.  The sauce was a nice tomato base but there wasn't a whole lot of seafood in there, so that was a bit disappointing but the whole dish was quite satisfying overall.  One great thing about the dinner was that they ended it with 3 free glasses of limoncello - yum! Total bill 142,000 Rp per person.  Sadly I was so tired by this time that I didn't take any pictures, sorry to end on a non-picture note!

I had an amazing, relaxing and peaceful time in Bali and I highly recommend it to anyone.  If anyone who's reading this ever decides to go, feel free to reach out with any questions.