Paon Bali — Restaurant in Amsterdam

Saw the extremely high rating on google so decided to visit for dinner. I would advise you to book at least a week in advance as the restaurant is relatively small so theres not that many seats and they fill up very quickly. We went on a friday night and basically, if you don't book, you wont get a seat until very late.

There's only 1 item on the menu , a normal meat option or a vegetarian option. We got the meat option and its consists of a plate with around 4 types of dishes and some other bits to it (skewer and fried shrimp). The menu changes daily and weekly and you basically don't have a choice unless you want to skip out a specific dish on the list.

I wont describe each dish too much as dishes vary but the food was just heavenly! It wasnt the "fancy" type of food at your typical good restaurant but it was definitely very nice. The food felt very authentic and homely, nothing extremely fancy but just very nice comfort food that you'd always want to have. My favourite dish was the belly pork (VERY fatty and flavourful) and I really enjoy the skewer as it was fatty and tasteful and not dry like most skewers are. My least favourite part was the bitter melon as I'm not a fan of bitter melon but that's just personal taste. If you want any more rice, you can always ask for more :)

Only thing to note is the restaurant gets relatively busy with takeaway orders every evening so service might be a little slower than other restaurants as the only people working there are the couple who owns the...

If you are in Amsterdam, and you are breathing, you must come here.

Queue was stowed out the door when we showed up around 1830 and didn’t subside even after we left around 1845. Got the Paon Bali which was some lovely fragrant rice, and then a delicious medley of all the different curries, veggies and deep fried goodness (9 different items if I remember correctly).

The absolute without a doubt highlight of the dish was the slow roasted pork belly, full of fatty deliciousness glazed with something magical, slow roasted so that it just melted in my mouth. Magnifique!

The metaphorical cherry that topped this very non metaphorical collage of cultural creations were the perfectly roasted peanuts (that did physically top the dish !!!). The dusting of nuts went perfectly with all the other constituent parts to add a nice crunch to every bite.

Wow wow and wow, thank you so much for showing me food I’ve never experienced before. It was brilliant to see this part of Amsterdam as well, very much worth the travel. Really hoping Balinese food makes it to Glasgow.

Also obligatory mention to the lovely staff and quick turnaround...

So the place is a bit out of way for us. Around 1.5 hrs walk. No biggie. We also wanted our dogs nails to get some road love. On our way it started raining. And we thought it better be worth it. And it was. The concept is pretty simple. You order either vegetarian or meat option. And they give you a plate. We got the meat and it was extremely flavourful. We thought the spice was light but sambal was there to kick it up a notch. The rice was perfect base for thick flavour small dishes on side. We also got dessert which in my very humble opinion would be even better cold. But still extremely good. During the meal the kind lady said they serve the true spicy food only on Wednesday and Thursday. So we know we going next time on Wednesday. Apart from food, the highlight of resturant is calming water noise from the fountain. So if you have nothing better to do, make a trip to the resturant. Get one of the best tasting plates in amsterdam, and meet some of the kindest hosts. Coming back we took a tram, just in case...