Was it Byron who said the nights over Melton Mowbray “heav’d with a thousand adultr’ous sighs?” Or was it Trollope? Possibly neither, since I might have made that up. If I did, the reason I did is just to say that much goes on in quiet places. Sanur bubbles in all sorts of ways, that is for sure, but no one could ever have accused it of being a culinary hot spot.
What is it about Sanur that makes it so appealing to some, and yet so ineffably dull? Who are the City Fathers of Sanur that have decreed commercial inertia in what I am reliably told is the Sin City of the South? Take a drive down Jalan Tamblingan and what do you see? Not much in the way of sin, I venture, but a hundred souvenir shops all selling the same junk; a hundred empty restaurants offering all-known cuisines and driveways to shabby hotels, where low-rent ancient Dutch and German tourists once used to roam.
Quite apart from Sanur’s dark side, and let’s not dwell on that, so far as foreigners and non-Balinese are concerned it is perhaps Bali’s most perfect dormitory town, given its location on the way to everywhere and proximity to the international school. As such I think we Sanurites should be able to find a half decent meal outside our own homes, but somehow that never seems to be. We do have our village cafe in the Cafe Batujimbar, and thank God for it. Good coffee and simple, but good fresh food plainly cooked may be as much as any human being can reasonably expect, but after twenty years the ambience may not excite. Perhaps there could be more to comestible life than this?
The Great Sanur Round-up
On the by-pass apparently there is, or was. Every Asian town seems to have a place where a certain kind of expat congregates to chow down on good plain simple Euro grub. They tend to look like roadhouses and Koki’s Mk.1 certainly did, and still does. But I gather the man who made it happen and his landlord fell out. So he moved on, weaved his paarticular magic half a mile or so further down the by-pass at a spanking new sports bar and prospered, while Koki’s lingers on a shadow of its former self. Good for him, but I still reckon Cafe B has better food.
Then there’s a new coffee fetish shop, also on the by-pass. The air-conditioning is nice, the coffee good and the food not bad, by which I mean unexceptionable coffee shop fare. They also have all those silly celeb mags, which I find is as good a way to combat Bali stress as any I’ve found to date.
For a while my friend Tosca, womanfully struggled as only a true restaurateuse born to the cloth could, to lick the Cafe Wayang into some semblance of shape. A hopeless struggle and finally she decamped to Jalan Oberoi to open her own Punta e Basta. I like Tosca’s food but Seminyak’s a step too far abroad for any true Sanurian to venture regularly but you all should check it out if you haven’t.
There are one or two Italian attempts in Sanur and the less said about them the better, except that if they are owned or run by an Italian as I believe they are, then he or she should be stripped of their citizenship for high crimes against the good name of the Italian people and condemned to a lifetime diet of instant packaged noodles.
On occasion I used to go to the Tanjung Sari for old times sake until the nostalgia just became plain depressing.
I don’t know whether you have ever noticed it, but some premises seem to be the kiss of death. Brave restaurateur after restaurateur raise money from their friends and go bust. The Black Hole of the Pretentious I call it, but then I sometimes can lack compassion. Could Sanur be a culinary Black Hole? I can think of no logical reason why that should be so, but the inescapable fact is that it is very hard to find anywhere decent to eat in this curious little town. I mean west of Seminyak there is actually some yakky action, even if airheaded, and in Ubud moss does actually grow under the arms. Things happen. But no one could rightly accuse Sanur of either.
Only Simplify.....
I find as I grow older the simpler my tastes become. I do not mean refined, I really do mean simple. Where food is concerned I just wish the cook would find delicious natural produce and cook it without destroying it. In other words get out the way. For me there can only be one great national cuisine and that is Italian. All others may be good in parts but generally speaking are contrived and overrated, and I do most definitely include French and Chinese in that. Thai food probably comes next, but never when cooked in a restaurant. Nothing to me seems sadder than to see grown men and women filling their lives and exercising such wit as they possess in the pursuit and discussion of what they like to call fine wines and fine food. Forests are cut down to pander to the need so many of us feel to show we are a cut above our fellows because we like to think we know a thing or two about food, or wine or travel. Such ersatz sophistication is monumentally dull and one wonders why some otherwise perfectly nice people are consumed by such nonsense.
Thank You, Lord....
Which finally brings me to Massimo Sacco from Apulia. Having finally liberated himself from a local partner, which seems to be a necessary rite of passage in these here parts, Massimo has opened his own restaurant on the western end of Jalan Tamblingan.
The food is what I would describe as substantial. No one is going to be disappointed by the pasta, which is high praise in a continent of instant noodles. I have not tried the risotto, but anyone who knows what they are doing and offers this dish is a brave man in my book. And so it is with fish too. A lovely bit of fresh fish can be turned into shoe leather within seconds, and usually is.
You can tell somebody who knows the restaurant game. They can schmooze with you and the rest of the clientele but they know exactly what’s going on in the kitchen at the same time. Their antennae are also figuring what the cashier and bartender are up to before they get up to it. You know if a restaurant has it just by the feel of the place and the variety of people in it. In the case of Massimo’s the ambience is spacious and doesn’t quite hang together, but it really doesn’t matter. In just a few weeks of opening the restaurant does a thriving trade for dinner. Most people can sort of sense from a combination of factors if a place is going to feed them decently, at a reasonable price and in convivial surroundings. And that is obviously what’s going on at Massimo’s. If that sounds like a modest achievement, why is it that so few restaurants in Bali can hack it?
The Spell is Broken...
And why if he’s any good as a chef and restaurateur is Massimo opening up in Sanur? If he’s even half good, why doesn’t he open up in Jalan Oberoi or elsewhere in Yak world? Well, it turns out Massimo just likes Sanur, he’s that strange.
You know how we never had a proper grocer in Bali until Dijon and Gourmet Garage broke the ice? Well I reckon Massimo may have broken the culinary curse of Sanur. Can we now look forward to a rash of restaurants in Sanur where we could actually have a half decent meal and a choice of where to go?
I live in hope, as all men should....
