Nusantara by Locavore Group — Restaurant in Pulau Bali

Another outfit from the Locavore team, and it doesn’t disappoint.

Right from the very warm welcome you know that you’re in good hands. The restaurant serves family style food from all over Indonesia,, where family style means that all dishes arrive at the same time - the good old sharing is caring approach. But don’t worry if you’re a solo diner, they adapt the portion sizes in the set menu so you still get to try a lot of different things.

You start with an assortment of small snacks, and what a start that was. I sat there with a big grin on my face sampling the different delicacies, with so many ingredients I hadn’t even heard of before. I had chosen the set dinner and was extremely happy with my decision. Whether it was the soup, cooked in a young coconut, the tuna, served as a ceviche twist, the beef tongue or any of the other delicacies (even the rice was fragrant due to some carefully added spices) - everything was top notch. I went for “medium spice” which was absolutely manageable. The lady who sat next to me would disagree - she was clearly more used to American BBQ sauce level spice… Only the dessert fell a little flat after the flavour firework that the snacks and main courses provided.

I accompanied the meal with some alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails, all very tasty and yet again introducing unknown and distinctive flavours, such as snake fruit kombucha. Definitely recommended.

The set menu comes at 500,000 IDR, the alcoholic cocktails around 120-130k, and the non-alcoholic at 50k (which is a real steal - I could go back there just sampling all of those in one sitting). All very fairly priced for what you get. Oh yes, and don’t miss the QR code in the menu that connects you to their Mixcloud playlists!

I wish the Locavore group would be stock listed, I’d scrape every penny together to invest. They are like Apple when it was still led by Steve Jobs - they work hard to perfect their products and sell them with a charm and presentation skill that is second to none.

Service 10/10 Ambient 10/10 Food...

Quite poor experience to be honest.

First of all, service was good and accommodating. So not much wrong there.

However that's about it. For me this is mostly pretentious cooking.

Dinner started with a selection of freebies, a plate of small bites. Looks nice, tastes maeh!, and this is kind of the whole dinner like that. The freebies contained several crispy items, however all of them tasted like a bag of chips you kept open the whole day.(everyone know what I mean by that) These freebies come with a fancy card with explanation, clearly they are trying to create some gastronomic journey bla bla experience. Unfortunately food doesn't fulfill the big promises.

We ordered then, as the waiter recommended, 3 smaller starter and 1-2 mains. This was way too much food, so feels like an up selling method.

The food.

We ordered some quail, which was tasteless. Some satay which arrived lukewarm. (food is family style and all served together, however chefs seem to not get the timing right so all food is in different temperatures and not really nice.. In their defense, kitchen looks super small for such a busy restaurant) Odered small plate pork shoulder. Also tasteless and portion ridiculous small and really nothing special, just sliced pork shoulder.

Goat dish Was decent, that's about it.

Also weird during reservation process and at arrival we were asked several times if any allergies dietary requirements.

We mentioned always my wife is pregnant.

However when we ordered dessert and we ate the dessert we realized while eating that there are fermented components, which a pregnant woman shouldn't eat. So I am wondering why all this attention when at the end that happens.

As you can see from the pictures, everything looks wow and nicely plated, but that's about it. It's just a show off restaurant in my opinion, good for tourists I guess. Not recommend...

I recently attended the Cooking Class event with Nusatara Restaurant and needless to say, it was an incredible experience and so much more! The day started with a local wet market tour in which all the local ingredients were showcased - from fresh fruits to vegetables and local snacks. We then stopped by to forage for local herbs, aromatics and young coconuts at a nearby rice field. Throughout this process, Chef Adi explained every single thing in detail - the flavour parings, cultural usages of each ingredient and how the land was cultivated for it. He is incredibly knowledgeable about the local flare and was brilliant at explaining it all.

Once the haul was gathered - we then ventured back to the restaurant where we proceeded with our cooking class. Before we started, Chef Adi and Chef Mitha then explained each recipe that we were going to cook and the traditional cooking methods that we were using, from grinding sambal in a pestle and mortar to cooking soups in coconut shells over a bamboo fire. It was incredibly detailed and each step was guided and explained well by both chefs. The menu was carefully thought out, covering all bases from meat to vegetarian dishes.

In the end we ended up with a feast in which I believed was enough to appease the local gods. The Nusantara staff - both the front of house and the kitchen team, were incredibly attentive, friendly, fun and accommodating - making the experience even more enjoyable! Chef Adi and Chef Mitha are incredible at what they do - they know their stuff and are great at it. 👌🏻

I highly recommend this cooking class to everyone. Whether you’re a home cook, professional chef (like myself) or just curious about traditional Balinese cooking, or even cooking in general. This is definitely the class to take!

Thank you again Nusantara team for the wholesome experience. Will be...