Portofino Ubud — Restaurant in Pulau Bali

This place was such a huge surprise for my heart. For my Italian heart 🤍

On my vision board from last year, Portofino was on the list right next to Bali. 📌

💫 And here I am, in Bali, enjoying a bit of Portofino.

This place was opened three weeks ago, a week later after my arrival here.

But only two days ago I discovered it, while coming back from the Visa office.

💫 In that moment, my heart skipped a beat. And I talked with the beautiful and welcoming girls from here promising them I will be back for a drink soon.

🌙 This night here I am. Tasting some olives, the best olives I ever had (they’re flavored with orange peel) and drinking kombucha (with mango). 🥂🫒

💫 Here I am in this place that it’s quite different from other restaurants in Ubud, and different from the ones I already love.

Different but so lovely. Oh, all I have in mind is the concert of Andrea Bocelli - Love in Portofino. 🤍🍋

✨ And the people that are working here are amazing, sweet and customer oriented. All the people in Bali are like this, but here they have something more. I “blame” @good.andik for this, the bartender that talked with me about the restaurant and how they need to attract more customers.

💫 Well, here I am helping him and this place that it’s already in my heart by writing this little story.

💫 Tomorrow I will be back for some photos during the day and maybe I will write a little more. It’s an inspiring place to be. And I can’t wait to explore more of the food and drinks.

P.s: there was something one of the girls said about the table I was sitting at. She said that my table will become famous. So may it be, and one day someone will come there and will stay at my table from Portofino and chase his/ her own big dream. 💫✨

Letters from Bali (& a bit from...

First thing I would like to say, is the food is great but unfortunately we were let down by a few other factors, which I will list below.

Music was too loud, understandably to try and reduce the noise of the street but I was struggling to hear my parter talk, which is ridiculous when there is only another 10 or so other people inside the restaurant. The lighting wasn't just flickering, it was if someone was playing with a dimmer switch the entire time. Which was really distracting and off putting. at times it would even go fully bright back to dark then bright again. Despite coming at what we though was a reasonable time 8:30-8:45pm I believe, and eating promptly we were asked before given dessert menu if we would be ordering as the kitchen is closing (this was at 10pm) bearing in mind google said 11pm for closing. I understand google isn't always updated, but we felt rushed, which wasn't a nice feeling when we would have actually liked to order another glass of wine as we were celebrating on the evening. Almost as soon as we received the menus, we were asked if we were ready to order. Essentially the feeling was very obvious around this 10pm time that they were really ready to clean up and for us to leave, we started to feel unwelcome.

I would like to say that we did have a nice waiter who apologised for the lighting, but it really did affect our evening which could have been avoided, and it wasn't the night we were hoping for and were left disappointed after seeing such good reviews.

Food is wonderful as I say, so if you do decide to come I recommend...

Amazing upscale Mediterranean/Italian restaurant in the middle of Ubud downtown. I didn't have high expectations because of the area, and the prices are a bit expensive, but the quality and taste of food and the friendly service totally blew my mind. This must be one of my best dinner experience in Ubud.

We started by getting two organic passion fruit and watermelon cocktails. They tasted very fresh, cold and not very sugary. We got the house bruschetta and fried calamari for appetizers and both were very tasty. We decided to go for pasta for our main, we tried the prawn and clam pasta and the lamb Ragu. Both of the pasta were cooked to perfection, the lamb Ragu was silky and delicious. The seafood on the other pasta was very fresh. I was literally sad when I finished my plate. At this point I was so amazed by the food, so I decided to try their schnitzel, and for me this was the King of the Show. They serve it in a very special way with artichokes and dill salad on top with a killer sauce. It was one of the best ever tried in my life. For dessert we got the Profiteroles which came with a salted caramel sauce, again just perfection

The chef and waiter both asked us about the food and the experience, which I am very grateful for. Hats off for everyone working in the restaurant, in making the dining experience...