Characteristic products and restaurants
The cornerstone of daily life for the Balinese and Indonesians in general, rice is omnipresent. The island's spectacular terraced rice paddies and centuries-old irrigation systems (subak) are just as much a part of our daily lives as the soil's volcanic ash. But volcanic ash also makes Balinese soils highly fertile for a host of vegetables: tomatoes, sweet potatoes, spinach, pumpkin, green beans, soybeans, cucumbers, bok choy cabbage and more.
Bali is unique in Indonesia in that beef - very common in the rest of the country - is virtually non-existent on this predominantly Hindu island, while pork, very rare elsewhere in Indonesia, is widely consumed. Chicken - very popular - and duck complete the picture. Fish, shrimp and squid are also very popular. Vegetarians and vegans will enjoy tempeh, a type of soya bean loaf fermented with yeast, giving a product resembling nougat but with a mushroom and nutty taste. Tofu is also common.
Balinese cuisine makes extremely generous use of spices of all kinds, and for the uninformed palate can sometimes seem a little too spicy. There are dozens of different spices, many of them native to Indonesia, such as cloves and nutmeg. Bumbu or basa gede is a fresh spice paste used in countless Balinese dishes. It consists of garlic, chili, shallot, nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, palm sugar, cumin and shrimp paste, but can contain many other ingredients.
Other condiments include clear soy sauce, kecap manis (a thick caramelized soy sauce), terasi (shrimp paste) and sambal, which are sauces or relishes with chili as a common ingredient. These include sambal kecap (soy sauce, chili pepper, shallot), sambal matah (minced chili pepper, garlic, lemongrass) and sambal embe (caramelized shallot and chili pepper).
While Balinese cuisine can be enjoyed in all kinds of restaurants, the warung is the place to go for lovers of authenticity. A few tables, benches bordered by hanging canvases, planks or bamboo, the cuisine here is often far better than in chic tourist restaurants. The warung is a meeting place for the locals, where you can eat, chat and drink coffee. In short, it's an inimitable social place at a very low price. Alternatively, treat yourself to the street vendors - kaki lima - who offer plenty of tasty snacks. For a little more comfort, however, rumah makan are hard-built warungs in the form of large canteens.
Indonesian and Balinese specialties
Bali is home to the great classics of national cuisine, such as the unmistakable nasi goreng- Indonesia's national dish - rice sautéed in kecap manis with shrimp, chicken, fried egg and vegetables, or mie goreng, where rice is replaced by wheat noodles. Satays are small skewers of meat (beef, chicken, lamb, pork, etc.) served with a creamy, spicy peanut sauce(bumbu kacang). Many dishes are accompanied by nasi lemak or coconut milk-infused rice.
Among Bali's most prized meat dishes, bebek betutu is often reserved for special occasions. This duck, garnished with spice paste(bumbu) and wrapped in banana leaves, requires a very long cooking time. Another festive dish is babi guling, a spit-roasted suckling pig stuffed with chillies, garlic and ginger.Iga babi is a recipe for pork ribs lacquered with chillies and kecap manis, while soto babi is a finely spiced pork soup. Finally,urutan is a pork sausage.
Alternatively, try sate lilit, a spicy minced meat (pork, chicken, fish) pressed around a stick of grilled lemongrass. Bakso is a type of beef dumpling often enjoyed grilled or served with noodles in a broth. On the seafood side, you'll find plenty of simply grilled fish, shellfish and mollusks. As for mujair nyat-nyat, this is a freshwater fish - tilapia - garnished with a spice paste(bumbu). Also worth mentioning is telur balado, hard-boiled eggs in a spicy sauce.
A complete dish, nasi campur is a rice cone served with satay, tempeh, beef cubes, vegetable curry and puffed shrimp chips(kropok). Alternatively, nasi jinggo is a portion of rice wrapped in banana leaves with a variety of side dishes (fried chicken, noodles, etc.). On the vegetable side, try jukut urab, a mixture of vegetables sautéed with grated coconut, or lawar , which is very similar but contains a little minced meat. Finally, tipat cantok is a salad served with a peanut sauce containing tipat (steamed rice dumplings) and a variety of vegetables.
Desserts and fruits
Balinese desserts - as in the rest of Southeast Asia - are relatively simple, with the recurring ingredients being the rice-coconut-palm sugar trio. These include laklak, a small pancake made with grated coconut and melted palm sugar, often colored green. Bubur sumsum is a rice porridge with palm sugar sauce and grated coconut, while bubur injin is a black glutinous rice porridge with the same topping. Bantal (Indonesian for cushion) are packets of glutinous rice, coconut, sugar and fruit (often bananas) wrapped in palm leaves. Sumpings are rice flour cakes wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. They may contain pumpkin (sumping waluh) or banana (sumping biu).
But there's also an incredible array of tasty tropical fruits. Of course, there are the inevitable mangoes, bananas, pineapples and papayas. But other rarer species are well worth a detour. Like the rambutan (a kind of hairy lychee), the mangosteen (a purple fruit with a thick skin that conceals a sweet, delicate white pulp) and the salak or snake fruit (a brown fruit with a scaly skin that encloses a white flesh with a slight pineapple taste, often preserved in syrup).
And let's not forget the jackfruit - an enormous fruit with a green, bumpy skin - whose dense, fibrous flesh is much appreciated as a meat substitute in curries. But of course it's impossible not to mention the durian. This enormous fruit, resembling a medieval mace covered in prickles, encloses creamy yellow flesh. Its overpowering smell, halfway between a rotting onion and dirty socks, has banned it from airplanes and hotel rooms! Its taste is apparently milder, even delicious and incomparable according to the locals. Definitely worth a try.
Coffee, soft drinks and alcohol
Indonesia is home to the world's most expensive coffee, kopi luwak, named after the luwak, a small mammal closely related to the European genet. In fact, this animal loves coffee berries. However, its digestive enzymes do not attack the beans, which are then collected in the luwak's excrement, cleaned and roasted. This pre-digestion is said to give the coffee its inimitable taste. This rarity comes at a price: between €200 and €1000/kg, or €50 per cup of coffee!
Beware, however: not only is there a lot of counterfeiting, but this process has also led to a much less glorious drift: luwaks are often locked up in tiny cages and force-fed coffee berries to produce the famous kopi luwak faster. Find out more beforehand. You'll also find Indonesian teas, usually jasmine-flavored and smoked. Teh panas manis (sweetened hot tea), teh panas tampa gula (unsweetened), teh jeruk panas (orange hot tea), teh jeruk nipis panas (lemon hot tea), teh jahe (ginger tea), etc. are all popular.
There are also many fruit juices. Try es jeruk, for example, a kind of orangeade made with calamansi, an incredibly fragrant citrus fruit halfway between a lime and a tangerine. Alternatively, es buah is a brightly colored mixture of condensed milk, various syrups, shredded coconut, jelly cubes and crushed ice. Love it or hate it.
Although predominantly Muslim, Indonesia has retained a certain know-how in beer brewing (bir) from the Dutch colonial presence, with the creation of the country's first brewery, founded by Heineken in 1929. Several varieties of lager can be found in the country, the best known being Bintang, Anker and Bali Hai which, despite its name, is brewed in Java. The only craft beer made in Bali, in the north of the island near Lovina, is Storm (the brewer is German). Although hard to find, it's excellent.
Although historically there has been no winegrowing in Bali, since the late 1990s a few winegrowers have tried their hand at it. For example, Hatten rosé wine is produced in Sanur, in the southeast of the island, but the grapes come from the north of Bali, near Singaraja. Although not a grand cru, it is very pleasant, light and tangy. It's also much less expensive than wines imported from Europe or Australia.
If you're not too keen, try arak, a strong alcohol (35-50°) made from fermented and distilled rice or palm wine, mixed with honey (arak maduh), lemon or soda. In remote villages, you may be offered a home-distilled one as a welcome gift, and in the island's seaside resorts, it forms the basis of many cocktails. Not to be confused with Lebanese arak, a grape brandy flavoured with aniseed. Finally, brem is a glutinous rice wine (5-14°). Quite sweet, it can be drunk chilled with meals.
