Bali - Day 6 - Spare Ribs, Martini, Suckling Pig...The Food Issue

Most of the stuff I did today I have already described, so I will now catch up with a topic dear to us all...FOOD!

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Nearly all the meals we have eaten here in Bali have either been at our Villa, or in the local town of Ubud. Ubud is renowned for it's very fine cuisine, and besides the local Indonesian offerings, nearly all the great cuisines of the world can be found here not just as a token option, but in some of it's best forms. If you want French, Italian, Chinese, Mediterranian, American, California, even a Philly Cheese steak, you can find it here and it will more than please your pallate. I haven't seen a Bratwurst on the menu yet, but then again, I don't really consider German food to rank highly in the world of foodies. I personally don't care too much about deserts, and nothing sweet here has wowed anyone so much that I need to write home about it, so I will limit my discussion to the big 3 meals.

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Breakfast:

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I can't comment on breakfast in Ubud because breakfast was included as part of our stay at the Villa Agung Khalia and we never ate it anywhere else. The meal always was started with a bowl of fresh mixed fruit that varied slightly day to day. The fruit could be topped by yogurt if desired, but after the first day I chose to enjoy it plain as it need no company. The options included a few of the standard American options like 2 eggs any style with bacon, or cereal, or a cheese omelet (or w/ veggies) and were about what you'd expect. A few of the American options came with a certain flair like the French toast which had a sliver of strawberry jam in the middle of it and was topped not with syrup, but rather a smattering of honey and was quite enjoyable.

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On certain days the Balinese breakfast was available and it consisted of an upside down dish full of rice semi-circled with fried tofu and an unknown relative of tofu as well as a side plate of delicious water spinach. The spinach was available at almost all meals we had in Bali and was always delicious. To be honest, I stuck with the other breakfasts, though it it is available tomorrow, I will order it. Coffee, tea, milk and water were the only liquids, but for us adults it was all we wanted anyway. Yet it was surprising that OJ or papaya juice or some other juice was not offered because it is so prevalent at every meal we had elsewhere.

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Lunch:

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While dinners would normally be my favorite meal of the day, lunch offered an abundant variety and never fell below 9 stars out of 10. Oddly, it seemed that the cheaper a meal was the better it tasted. When we splurged and payed about $12 US per person the meal was only 9 stars, but if we dipped below the $5 mark, it was 10 stars. Yesterday's pig was a prime example.

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We went to Ibu Oka where the only thing on the menu was the suckling pig. The restaurant opens around 11AM and serves plates of either Special for $2.60 or Different for $4.oo until they run out of pig which is usually around 3PM. From what we could tell, the only difference between special and different was that different the rice on a separate plate, and special came as a glorious mess piled high. We all went cheap and ordered the pile of Special which had pork from various parts of the pig, some savory blood sausage, spinach and another spicy vegetable, a slab of the delectable skin and of course some rice. (Nearly every meal here comes with rice...hey, we're surrounded by infinite rice paddies.) The slab of skin was the star of the meal. For $3.00 you can order just a plate of the skin, and we tried to order it, but it was sold out. The skin shatters like glass under the fork and is a hedonistic pleasure I hope to enjoy again and as often as possible.

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Another example of superb lunch came today when we supped at Naughty Nuri's. Since it was a Saturday, the 9 or so table were full and we had to stand out front by the sidewalk grill where they were making slabs of BBQ ribs and chicken that wafted smoke on us during the wait for a table. When we saw a table near finishing we hovered around until we could usurp their table before they even finished eating or paying. Most all of us ordered the famous ribs and we added a couple of orders of garlic bread that came quickly and were devoured.

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The ribs took a while longer because some Frenchies at the table next to the grill distracted our server and procured our slabs of ribs. We didn't mind because this gave us a chance to order a couple of martinis. A sign near our table noted that this hole-in-the-wall eatery had won the award for the best martini in Indonesia, and a T-shirt they were proudly selling with the slogan, "Eat, Pay, Leave," had a subtext that referred to a NY Times article about the best martinis in the world of which this was one. I must say it was superb, and the shaken not stirred flair of the server added to the quality. On my second martini, the fall off the bone ribs were at last delivered and I would have to say they rank as some of the best I have ever had...BTW, the ribs cost $6.50.

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Other lunches included a Mediterranean small plate at Cafe Luna, extraordinary beef and chicken sate with peanut sauce at a place whose name I can't remember, and at another place some perfectly cooked tempura vegetable. My only regret is that I did not get to try something from one of the street cart vendors that the locals eat at.

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Dinner:

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Thrice we ate at the Villa, and the first meal everyone ordered something different and all the meals were good, but one was great. The second time we ate at the Villa, the sweet and sour whole red snapper meal was ordered by most all as it was perfectly cooked and covered in a sauce that I could have spooned into my mouth unaccompanied.

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Outside of the Villa, we ate at restaurants like the Dirty Duck and Terazzo, where we filled the table with a variety of entrees and appetizers with hardly a single dish failing to please and some that we forced everyone to try because the could not be missed.

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Our final night here in Bali, tonight, we ate for the third time here at the Villa and we splurged. For $100 US ($12.50 per person), we got ourselves a pig. A suckling pig that perhaps came from the same restaurant we had lunch at the prior day. Accompanied by vegetables, rice, sausage and more, we probably ate less than a 10th of the suckling pig, and it was as succulent as can be. We took home a bit of the leftovers, but I think we supplied many a meal to our gracious hosts for days to come.

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Tomorrow we fly back to Hong Kong and the following morning back to the snowed in east coast of the good old USA. Food here has been nothing short of superb, we've eaten like kings and queens, and if that were all that Bali had to offer it would be enough. But couple that with adventures of a lifetime, and this has been unquestionably my greatest road trip ever!