Authentic Balinese food at Denpasar Festival 2011



Denpasar this year will again hosts a major exhibition event continuing its past success. Denpasar Festival 2011 will be held around the center point (Km 0) of Denpasar city, which is around the Candramuka monument.

Among the festival highly interesting event is its culinary exhibition, which promised to hosts Denpasar's best traditional and authentic Balinese cuisines, including its legendary sellers. During this event, Balinese culinary enthusiasts could greatly enhance their palate portfolio by visiting the festival ground instead of traveling around Denpasar scouting for each one of individual cuisine's bests.

Denpasar Festival 2011 will be held from 28 to 31 December, and its food zone will occupies the Gajah Mada street. Please refer to the map above for zoning reference.

For further information visit their website at http://www.denpasar-festival.com. (byms)
posted from Bloggeroid

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Happy Cinema, movie theatre for rent in Bali



Having spent two years living in this beautiful island, movie watching has quickly becomes a thing of our past. From once a month at least while living in Jakarta, to only two movies for three past two years living here.

The biggest problem with cinemas in Bali is that there is almost none exist: there's only one decent theatre with two screens to cater all the movie goers in Denpasar. During new movies showing, it's not rare for movie goers to wait up for days to get a ticket. On first shows, usually the only way to get ticket is by join the early queue at 10 in the morning: very impractical.

Land price is among the top challenge for new cinemas opening in Bali, which making best location is hard to afford. Not to mention there are still the common belief that locals and tourists prefer to watch art performances than box office movies.

There were rumors of both Indonesian cinema giants to expand their network here, however the sign of 'Denpasar XXI opening soon' hanging at Denpasar Junction entrance is two years old now, and there's no indication it going to be changing anytime soon.

In the midst of this unmet demand, Happy Cinema entered the scene with offering private movie screening.

Equipped with hi tech movie projector and 100" wide screen, viewers are also treated with nice sofas, and good sound systems.



At the moment Happy Cinema has only two theatres with each suitable to hosts six people However Rocky Pramatra its owner said that expansion is a possibility, seeing that he still has spaces available, and so far Happy Cinema has garnered a positive response from Denpasar's movie enthusiasts.

With the fee of 80 K IDR (around $8) per room per movie, that's less than 15 K a person. And you're not limited to showing schedules as you can simply chooses from Happy Cinema 300ish movie collection, ranging from action, drama, comedy, horror, including Asian and Indonesian movie selections. Bollywood are also going to be on the list.

Beside of the movie, Happy Cinema also provides food and drinks to accompany your movie. Based on reviewing some of their menu, Epicurina thinks both the food and drinks are quite good, and it's about on par with the same menus served in Cafes and restaurants. No popcorn at the moment but Happy Cinema are eager to hear about your suggestions and ideas.

Located in front of the New Media College, 5 minute drive from Bajra Sandhi Park, Renon, Happy Cinema aims at the youngsters, though so far have been receiving good response from family audience a well. Mothers and fathers who usually have to go through all the ordeals of arranging baby sitting or even take turns, now can happily take their toddlers, along with the baby sitters into the movie theatre.



For reservations call 0361 239 912 03, and for their latest news follow @happycinemaBali on Twitter, or visit their Facebook page.

Happy Cinema Bali is located at Jl. Tukad Batanghari No. 36, Denpasar, Bali. Opens daily from 11 to 21 (last show). (byms)
posted from Bloggeroid

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Nasi Kuning Pak Jojon, Sanglah, Denpasar




This is a road side stall we discovered earlier this month. We've passed it so many times before and got curious as why this place always attracts so many customers, but was hesitant due to the absence of any sign whatsoever that could signals what sort of food they are selling.

Well it turned out that out sells Nasi Kuning, in the fashion of mixed rice/rice combo that is a common in Denpasar, Bali.

While the taste is not the best we ever had, it is enough to satisfy our crave of Nasi Kuning, not to mention it is dead cheap as well; a dinner for two including ice teas costs only 15K IDR ($1.5). (byms)
posted from Bloggeroid

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Food shot: Aburi Sushi from Ryoshi, Bali



What pictured here is my attempt at using Panasonic Lumix DMC FH-7 which I acquired recently from Bali Creative Festival 2011.

Compact and lightweight, it boasts fascinating features like touch-shot which enables you to pick a focus area and take a picture with a tap on its LCD display, Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) paired with a very high ISO rating up to ISO 1600 which is very convenient for close-up and indoor macro shots. It is also capable to sport a good isolation with its narrow Depth of Field (DOF) during close-range shots, producing a good blurred background as illustrated.

One definite disadvantage though: it doesn't have the comfort of on the spot publishing as HTC Salsa does :).

I'll be back with more details on its fitness for casual food photography later on. (byms)

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Plate dropping happy Bruce Lim on AFC's Next Celebrity Chef

My wife is among the big fans of cooking contest shows on TV, and through Asian Food Channel (AFC) available in Indonesian under the Telkomvision network in Indonesia, she has got a good choice of shows. On the other hand, I prefer more adventurous and food review kinds like the Makansutra by K.F. Seetoh, and Taste of Indonesia by Bondan & Gwen Winarno. I myself sometimes watch Australian Junior MasterChef, mostly due to the cheerful atmosphere and attitudes of both the contestants and the judges.


A new cooking show came to AFC however, garnered my attention. It's the "AFC's Next Celebrity Chef", which competes chefs from Asian countries in series of cooking competition. My intention however, lies more upon the interest if any Indonesian chefs participates in the show, and it quickly fades as well with the confusion of the show's true intention: is it a cooking contest or a drama tv show?

While I don't deny that drama attracts, but I think AFC's Next Celebrity Chef has taken it over the top. Episodes after episodes, it got more focused toward how the contestants feels about the jury's treatment, especially with chef Bruce Lim, and less on the cooking itself.

Who is Bruce Lim?

For you who are not familiar with chef Bruce Lim, he's a nice and warm looking guy who already hosts "Tablescapes" on AFC, which introduces the modernized Philippines cuisine and cooking.

On the contrary with his previous image though, on AFC's Next Celebrity Chef, Bruce had transformed into a brassy character which on many occasions does not restrain himself from sending plates of cooking into the ground smashing, as a sign of his disapproval with the contestant's cooking quality -- a show that often left the contestant gawked or frozen in humiliation.

My biggest question is, whether chef Bruce Lim is really one bad ass plate slamming chef in real life? Because if he doesn't, then this is a serious case of over-dramatization and bad role-playing.

While it might be tempting to become Gordon Ramsay, he lives his life living in that character and not just on-stage. With Bruce Lim however, the character is inconsistent hence it's confusing; on one side he shows a hearty and warm character upon hosting Tablescapes, while on Next Celebrity Chef suddenly he's becoming the over-critical plate-slamming-happy brazen jury. Which one is his true face? Because now every times I see Bruce on Tablescapes, I imagined him smashing plates to the ground, and while watching Next Celebrity Chef, I imagined his soft and mellow character on Tablescapes: confusing.

Becoming TV Personality

The key to become a TV personality is first of all, that you get the airtime (duh!). An important thing you have to do afterward, is to maintain at all time the consistency of your character's branding. Just like Gordon Ramsay is the kitchen bad boy, Andrew Zimmern is the happy adventurous food lover, Anthony Bourdain is the classy rebellious food traveller, Jamie Oliver is the smart and casual cooking prodigy, while Nigella Lawson is the Queen of Food Porn, they all have -- working through the years -- constantly shown their unique personality throughout shows they hosts, books written, hence the character sticks.


As with Bruce Lim, what will he become? He's fairly less known, even though having some impressive background and experiences, and he's suddenly in a bad mood too often. Seeing Bruce dumps plate on Next Celebrity Chef does not painting him as an someone interesting, but chaotic and a Ramsay's wannabe instead.

Even with his well known harsh chef-mode temperament, Gordon Ramsay in Hell's Kitchen still reserves himself from doing the expected, and in American MasterChef it's Joe Bastianich who does the food dumping more often than Ramsay.


The "I-must-become-the-bad-boy-personality-because-it-looks-like-fun" attitude however, seems to be prone happening to TV personalities -- or even celebrities -- without conscious awareness of their personal branding, or having one at all. I still remember raising my eyebrows during the first season of Indonesian Idols was aired on TV; almost all of the judges, who usually known as cool and positive people, suddenly turned into this over-critical and harsh Simon Cowell's (bad) imitation. And they don't share roles but all wanting to become Simon. Imagine the chaos it produced?


On the other hand I have also become amazed on most times Steven Tyler gave comments during his role as the American Idol's jury. Is he really actually that smart and warm? During the show, Steven lavishly throwing "so good" and "lovely" to performances he likes -- without hesitation, which is so humble and on the contrary to his perceived image as Aerosmith's front man, which most audience I believe expected a rather wild and bad-ass personality. And I have to raise my hat to all the American Idol judges along with Steven, who does not try to replace Simon role as the American Idol's bad boy.

Back to the show itself

As with the AFC's Next Celebrity Chef, they need to put up something more original and touching; not in the lebay* way of touching, but something that inspires. Brazen Bruce might launch the show's popularity, however it's quickly getting weary and lacked originality.

Instead, how about him doing Tinikling dance when he's happy, and Manu Siva Tau when he's not? (byms)

*over dramatization.

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Bugs in food & related incident handling

Now I'm not squeamish about food, in fact I'm more into xenophilia than xenophobia when concerning food. I loved sushi, I don't mind encountering a completely foreign dish, I have even eaten the various tiny bugs sold in Thailand including the ants, and caterpillars, and grows to like grasshopper among others.

However I have a strong objection when foreign things are introduced to the meal I have, while it's certainly not the intended part of the dish. Like this tiny cockroach we encountered during dining in one of our favourite spot in Denpasar Junction, Bali.

We suspected it was one of those tiny species which only introduced to Indonesia in recent years; it is most likely the brown-banded cockroach, or its counterpart the German cockroach. Never got a chance to interview them, since usually they are either running away or flattened out.

Knock, knock, who's there?

Hey wait! You look familiar...
The picky eater discovered this, after I went through like 3/4 of out dish; which is the pangsit goreng (fried wonton). What's shown here is the almost emptied sweet and sour sauce.

Upon informed to the waiter, she looked shocked and becoming stiff; a sign that's no good-enough crisis handle management or training was in place. She however, was able to resist the temptation for a self defence arguments, and decided to took our bowl of sauce away into the kitchen to confirm our sighting.

(But first we took a snapshot of it for our own reference)

Shortly afterward, she returned from the kitchen and started to apologizing, with a promise that they would improve their service. Upon receiving further complaint from my wife, the picky eater, on how such thing could happen, she revealed that there are regular pest cleaning activity performed by one national vendor in Bali.

Well perhaps it's time for them to look for other provider.

Following are our notes of the incident-handling for restaurant services:
  1. There are different levels of misshapen possible to occur during the service of a restaurant, and business owners need to be prepared for preventive measures as well as crisis-handling
  2. If it can, it will; so when misshapen occurs, it's best to prepare in advance what sort of reactions staffs must perform to contain the damage
  3. Have the steps recorded into a SOP, print it, and have it placed nearby for quick access
  4. Self-defence would only make the matters worse
  5. Put the blame on the customers is a suicidal attempt 
  6. Most customers on most cases only wish they are:
    1. Heard
    2. Confirmed about their objections
    3. Offered a sincere apology
  7. Inclusion of bugs or other unwanted objects into customer's meal is a big incident, and it deals with not only customer feeling dissatisfied, but also disgusted, and sometimes even humiliated
  8. On such incidents the manager himself/herself would need to be presented to offer apology, since s/he is the responsible person for the whole operation of the restaurant, not the staff
  9. If you are thinking of retaining the customer, then damage containment alone is not enough; since that's only merely the first-aid kit. However it is usually how good the first aid was, that determines the rest of the story
  10. Beyond containment, do something that would make your customers feel appreciated, e.g.: waive their bill, offer vouchers, write an apology letter on the newspaper, whatever the customer (not you) would feel fit
  11. Handled, but disgruntled customers will think about some way to make them feel even
  12. Handled, and appreciated customers often are willing to forgive such incident, even they are no longer willing to be your customer afterward
As with us, I think we'll steer away from this place, until I no longer able to feel the sensation of those insects crawling behind my throat -- which in our mind is now closely associated with this chain of restaurant. (byms)


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Epicurina mentioned on Trubus Magazine


Both me and Epicurina were mentioned on Ed. 505 of Trubus Magazine, Indonesia's leading horticultural magazine, thanks to Riefza. The report is about culinary potencies of sea-urchin.

Most Indonesian food photos owned and used on Epicurina sites (i.e.: website, blog), are available for publication and repost under CC (Creative Commons) license which meant they're virtually free, with some restrictions and conditions. Please visit Epicurina Licensing page for complete details. (byms)

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Water snails satay in Bali

Water snails satay, Warung Pan Putu, Denpasar, Bali
Having originated from a deep Sundanese cultural background, I was quite familiar with the water snails cooking. Back there, the snail is called "Tutut", and there's only one way to cook it: in a thin curry with strong galangal and turmeric seasoning.

Moving to Bali, I noticed quite happily that the same food do exist, only the difference is that people here prefers their snails on a skewer, alias as satay. "Kakul" is the name of the food in Bali, and among the pioneer of introducing the Sate Kakul to the Balinese people are Pan Putu (Pan = Mister), and he opens a restaurant which named "Warung Pan Putu" which located at Jl. Ahmad Yani No.187, Denpasar - Bali.

Just like most satay from Indonesia, Sate Kakul too, are served with peanut sauce. However unlike Sate Madura, the sauce is usually thin and not too creamy.

Still considered as Asian water snails, however Tutut or Kakul are different with the apple snails usually consumed in other Asian countries. It is mainly harvested from rice fields, its scientific name is Viviparidae Bellamyinae.

Water snails have this strong metallic and earthy taste, very much like escargot, only that with a chewy and jerky texture unlike the soft escargot; more like shellfish only much tougher. As for the taste itself, it contains only low level of savouriness and lacked strong flavour, hence heavy seasoning is almost always a necessity. (byms)


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Would you eat Poo?



"Would you eat poo?" Coming from your English-speaking friend this question would looks like an invitation to something that would get high rating on YouTube. However, if the question refers to a brand of an Indonesian delicacy, you might not feel the request so strange and might even excited by it.

Poo pictured above is a brand of getuk pisang, an Indonesian delicacy originated from the eastern Java region of Indonesia. It is a sweet and fragrant cake made from mashed banana in form of compacted cylinder. It looks purplish or brownish depending to the type of banana it used.

Getuk Pisang image from "Oleh-Oleh Kediri" in Tokopedia
Getuk Pisang image from Zudi Susanto
Though tasted delicious, "Poo" might not gain market success abroad, especially in English speaking countries for the connotation it has -- with India as exception, as Poo is also the name of a small town in Himachal Pradesh district. (byms)

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Appearances