Cooking and Food – an Innocent Life

Travel Diaries: Pigging out at Bali

When you think of Bali, you think sun, sand and surfing. That’s what I thought as well until I heard that Bali is a haven for Pork lovers. This post serves as a beginners guide to Babi Guling and other Pork dishes based on my recent trip to Bali.

Babi Guling(Babi/B2 = Pork), the legendary pork dish once reserved for special occasions like weddings and religious festivals, can now be easily found at a number of warungs around Bali. The pig is stuffed and infused with a concoction of traditional spice paste and spit-roasted.

A quick search on the internet, gives you a list of few fabled ones that you can try. But I wanted some local and personal opinions and so I asked for recommendations on an internal slack channel and made a to-do list
from all those replies.

Since I was based in Jimbaran, a lot of those restos were > 10kms away. But luckily, there’s GO-FOOD.

Babi Guling Pak Candra

The menu on GO-FOOD was difficult to decipher but after a few google searches I settled on ordering the ‘Babi Guling Spesial Kotak’. The internet tells me that this resto’s prices are high compared to elsewhere. This box cost me 50k rupiah plus go-food’s delivery fee made the final price to 81k rupiah.

The food arrived in a delightful meal box with everything neatly packed into their own sections. I could identify Babi Guling, Crispy pork skin, Pork Soup, Pork & Chicken Satay and of course Sambal. Everything in this meal box was super tasty. This meal was to set the benchmark for all the other Babi Guling’s I would try, in my attempt to find a favourite.

Babi Guling Karya Rebo

To appease midweek cravings, I opened up GO-FOOD to look for something close by and Babi Guling Karya Rebo with its 4.6star rating intrigued me into ordering it. The Nasi Babi special box was priced at Rp58k, higher than Pak Candra’s with no visible rational to its pricing.

The box sadly did not contain any soup. The Babi did not live up to the flavour of Pak Candra’s. The overall quantity was less as well. However the redeeming factor was the Crackling. It was way better and melt in your mouth compared to Pak Candra’s.

Babi Guling Ibu Oka

I traveled on the weekend to Ubud with my main agenda being to try out the Babi Guling Ibu Oka. Ibu Oka got famous thanks to Anthony Bourdain and has now opened 3 outlets around Ubud. I was directed towards Ibu Oka 3, the restaurant off the main road with a view of the forest. The interiors had an excess of pig related architecture. Their menu is limited, but thankfully in English, with a brief explanation so that you know what you want to order.

I ordered the Spesial which comes with Rice, fresh vegetable, pork sausage, fried meat, and a piece of crackling. There was a light coconut based curry which was added on top and I believe that is what made Ibu Oka’s Babi Guling’s one of the contenders for the Bali’s best Babi Guling. The meat was delicious and this was the best(I dare say, perfect) Crackling I’ve tasted. If you visit Ibu Oka, try the more expensive Pisah where they serve the soup as well.

Warung Babi Guling Pak Dobil Nusa Dua

With the weekend gone by and other Babi Guling places far away, I decided to do some internet research and found ‘Warung Babi Guling Pak Dobil Nusa Dua’. Thankfully, it was on GO-FOOD, however it had Nasi Campur Babi Guling(Campur = Mix) and Nasi Kotak listed with no apparent explanation to why the price differed by Rp50k. So I just decided to order the Rp50k priced Nasi Kotak to see what I would get for Rp50k.

The kotak contained a box of meat plus rice. Not as nicely packed as Pak Candra’s and was underwhelming when you’ve paid Rp5ok for it. However the Babi was excellent. Everything was just brilliant. The crackling was different and flavoured unlike the others before it and there were 2 pieces of it as well. This for me was the best of all the Babi Guling’s I’ve had thus far.

I did order the Nasi Campur Babi Guling on my last day in Bali just because I was curious to see what was different. The quantity and quality was heavily reduced in this tightly packed meal. I would recommend everyone to stick to the Nasi Kotak.

This is all the Babi Guling that I was able to try out during my stay there.

Sate Babi Bawah Pohon

Sate Babi Bawah Pohon is famous for its Satay. Do try it. They serve the sweet barbequed satay with Chilli and Salt. The prices for 8 pieces of Satay was just Rp34k.

Basé Basé

The Nasi Campur Babi Bali had a light lemongrass flavour which supplemented the pork well. It came with soup as well.

Borneo Kitchen

The Nasi Campur here had a sweet and spicy flavour and the meat portions were pretty generous. This was one of our favourite places to order from.

I am back in India now and deeply missing all the tasty pork. I hope this post helps introduce you to some of the islands’ best pork places.
Happy eating 🐷 !

📍 The Bali Pork List

Greekalicious

Some people consider me as an ideal example of a person who lives to eat. I love hogging out every now and then and my bank balance will tell you the story.

Way back in College, Way back when we started watching Highway on My Plate.. i had this dream of having a job of travelling and reviewing food. Man vs Food introduced us to food challenges. What a life i thought, even though it had its own pitfalls health wise. But nevertheless everyone has a dream job and this is one of mine.

I’ve been in Chennai for the past one year and i’ve been loving the food here. When me and my friends initially got placed in TCS and booked our tickets to Chennai, our friends and relatives were apprehensive about the food in Chennai. They talked about stereotyped food everywhere and this scared us a bit. But surprise, surprise..our gastronomical journey so far has been awesome. True there have been ups and downs but generally i’ve had some really good food. It helped that i have a group of friends who love to eat as well. In the past one year, i’ve eaten at more than 60 restaurants in Chennai and my Burrp! profile is proof of that 😀 We also had this little side project titles ‘ Experiments and Food ‘ going for sometime until it became too tough to gather pictures and upload them to one place.

Now the fun part came when Burrp! emailed me and asked me if i was interested in reviewing Azulia, where a Greek food festival was taking place. THIS was BIG! I was so surprised!! The email said that i could take a friend so i called up @Nievu as she’s accompanied me to most of the restaurants and also because she could offer a vegetarian perspective to the food.

So the date was set, 11th November was the night and boy was it fun. Except for the part where we paid 400 for the cab to drop us back, the night was epic! Wish i could take part in more such ~~free food~~… erm Food Reviews.

FYI: You can read the Review here.

: Chef Ethem Aydemir

*Burrrrrp*

Belled One Cat

Our trip to B’lore started at 10:30 on Thursday, It was freezing Cold and luckily i had got my jacket along. But my poor sandal-ed feet were frozen numb! we alighted the bus at around 8:30 and with skewed directions from Shilpika who had reached earlier were directed to the same lodge that they were staying at. Ramakrishna Lodge. The Food was decent but the ‘4 bed’ room sucked. but then we did not spend lot of time there. After Breakfast we decided to do dry run and set off to RV from platform 19, Majestic. We decided to buy the daily passes of Rs 32; the best option. Due to an accident and traffic we reached RV almost an hour later at 11:30. Had asked Rahul to meet and show us around. So thats what we did, checked some part of the campus and their hostels were cool! met Nolan on our way back. actually we were on the Way to KFC. muhahaha! The bill was steep! especially we were funding Rahul. Then we were back to the room and slept. Tushar went to meet his sis and friends to Koramangala. Raison and Me decided to stay back and brush up our basics. So thats what we did till around 11.

The Next day started with Tushar’s alarm rudely awakening us around 5:15. i still stayed in bed till 5:40. Then we rushed out and had breakfast and were off to catch a bus at 7. Shilpika was already there and we had woken up Rahul just in case we needed to dump our back packs in his room. They allowed us in at around 8. The Process sis not look very smooth because one of the site candidate list hadnt been recieved. Moreover, my name was also not on the list of my site. There were 2 other such people in my room. We sorted out our matter with the site incharge, who was very helpful. Our belongings were We were told our site was reallotted to the first floor. It was. We found our names and i did not have any other problems expect for the delayed start in the test and also the comp getting hung before my session began. Everything else went well but i could see chaos around me and the assistants did not seem to be well informed about backup protocols. After coming out i came to know that Tushar and few others who had the same prob as me did not get to write their tests. I dont know what had happened. The same mess that was sorted out for us wasnt done for them. Now, do i call myself lucky? those guys had also been allotted the same changed site as me but no one had notified them. All our admit cards had only our original site numbers on them. They finally were told to mail the Prometric guys and ask for a re-allottment. Now we have Lab semesters starting tomorrow, what help would a re-allottment do for vtu students travelling from all over to b’lore to write it? it would be a waste of time and money. I hope they’ll somehow sort out all the mess thats currently present.
My first therefore was eventful, online and much easier than expected 🙂

Lunch saw us at McDonalds of nearby Gopalan Mall. Next stop was Avenue Road to get OFC and PE texts for semester studying, then we headed back to our room and rested. Around 7 i went out exploring and bought a Navy blue Tee at Koutons. Tushar s sis shopped a lot for him. And he also ended up buying a jacket for the cold. Dinner was chicken biryani and tikka at a place called ‘Talk of the Town’. We packed, sorted out our bills and checked out at around 10. Bus was at 10:35.

i reached home at 8:30 and have been online since 🙂
Planning to do a little lab study later today!

Sunday cooking

Been cooking today morning ..Helped around with the breakfast.we were trying something ne today..That is The Appam..a local food item[i think] made from rice flour and coconut milk having a crusty edge and a fluffy soft centre. it basically resembles a “Galaxy” due to its flat shape, with bulk mass at the centre.
Chal anyway thought i should learn something and was helping around and towards the end even ended up experimenting with some toppings on the appam.the rest of the afternoon i skipped lunch and went to sleep woke up at 5 and lazed around…

Some theories for the Inheritance Trilogy fans