Coco Bistro — Restaurant in Denpasar Selatan

After numerous previous visits to Coco Bistro in the past, I booked many weeks ahead for a group of 14 people. I asked for the spot we usually have, and was told this was confirmed. I messaged on morning of booking, and once again had it confirmed in writing. Approx 2 hours before our booking, I received a message that Coco Bistro now had a 300,000 IDR minimum spend per person. I rang them and spoke to someone who said that they would speak to a supervisor, and he would ring me back. He did ring back, and told me that there was nothing that could be done about this. I told him how unacceptable it was to take a booking, reconfirm it on that morning, then at the last minute tell us that there was a minimum spend. My initial thought was to cancel and go elsewhere, as my wife wanted me to do, but as it was last minute on a Friday night, and the booking was for 14 people, I was concerned about finding somewhere else to fit us in. The person I spoke to then said that if we sat up on the terrace, not on the area nearest to the beach, he could let us off the minimum spend. I had to accept this, while still letting him know how this was a terrible way to treat a regular customer. They had also promised to have beer in the freezer for us, as they had in the past served warm beer. Upon arrival we were shown to our non premium seating (his words), and we ordered our drinks. We were then stunned to be served warm beer. I had asked on our arrival if there were beers in the freezer, and was assured that there was. We complained about the warm beer, and were given other beers that weren’t much better. I went up to the bar area and asked why we were still getting warm beer, and one person there apologised and promised that they would now put our beers in the freezer (after being promised earlier that this was happening, which was clearly a lie). We waited for a while, and I then returned to the bar and asked for our beers from the freezer. I watched the barman take beers from somewhere next to the freezer (not in the freezer), and brought them to me to feel. They were not particularly cold at all, and I told him to forget the beers, and we would be leaving. He then tried to get me to stay by promising that he would put some in the freezer. We paid our bill, which was the dearest meal we had, and the dearest Bintang that we had on our holiday (47k plus 18% taxes for warm small Bintang). I told the staff that we would never return, would never recommend, and would let people know how they treated customers. No other restaurant treated us like this during our holiday, with at times 18 people in our group. I see the owner’s response to this review was to cut and paste their reply to any other critical review. I shouldn’t have...

Though Coco Bistro is a fairly cosy and romantic place to sit with your loved one(s) in the evening, the unphased and chaotic staff really impacts the experience in a negative way. They seem to be untrained in basic hospitality etiquette: how to treat guests, how to serve guests and generally how hospitality should be executed. They only focus on 'reeling tourists in at the boulevard' but then fail to see that we are new guests in need of a menu, refreshment and want to order. Instead, they run around, constantly loudly shouting to each other in their mics/ear phones. While good professional restaurants would be able to serve their guests with half the staff that Coco Bistro has, this team is running around like decapitated chickens. Mind you that it was not busy, and most guests were just asking for simple beverages. They try, but it's very obvious they just lack basic training.

When asking (in Bahasa) for Kopi Susu, which is one of the most simple and basic commodity beverages in the whole of Indonesia, he didn't even understand what we meant. He never heard of it. 'Instead' , he said, 'we do serve iced cappuccino.' I felt like ordering a hotdog in New York, and being told that they don't have a clue what that is but offer a traditional Japanese okonomiyaki pancake instead. Should I as a 'bule' know Indonesian beverages better than one of her local residents?

After waiting for more than 45 minutes, and politely asking three waiters, we finally got our drinks, a simple iced tea. From there, we still had to wait another 30 minutes for the food to arrive. On top of that, it was stone cold. I am not a demanding customer, but this was disappointing.

The taste of the food is not bad and acceptible (though forgettable), if only it would have had the right temperature. After having to ask 4 waiters for 20 minutes, we were finally presented the bill. The waiter seemed confused and surprised that we wanted our remaining 75k IDR back that we paid too much, instead of leaving it as tip.

In the last 15 years, Bali (and Sanur in particular) has sadly turned into an expensive big tourist trap. The island has become like her tourists: loud, generic, and with little substance. Coco Bistro seems like the embodiment of...

I was quite much impressed by dining experience during dinner time when the service and food quality was quite surprising and fulfilled my expectations. Restaurant was fully packed and you need the reservation if you want to sit on the beach side. The next day, I gave the chance to the breakfast promo, although I was quite hesitant. Unfortunately, they run out of the sourdough bread for smash avo with poached egg so they substituted it for brioche, which wasn’t quite it for that type of dish. The portions are rather smaller for the promo, so I had to order extra meals. Waiting time on the other hand with almost empty restaurant is longer than if it’s fully packed during dinner. In overall I don’t think their promo for 75k is good value for money if you aim for quality and quantity. What I appreciate is their service recovery as they did not only apologized for missing options but offered some small compensation in the form feee drink. At the end I ended up spending over 200k coming just to try the promo. In general as per my experience in Sanur I wouldn’t recommend the beach front cafes ( there is one exception) much, if you really want to have good value for money. I still appreciate the professional service in Coco bistro and extremely polite and...