Restaurant Check: Sarong (BALI)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
Opened last year, Sarong is located at party central Kuta. The restaurant-bar-lounge exudes a cool vibe in an airy setting of drape curtains, chandeliers, long communal tables, couches and throw cushions, with lounge and contemporary jazz music for chilling the night away. This is a place for mates’ (and girls’ ) night out, more than for business entertaining.

The stylish dining room for 120 is the brainchild of Australian chef Will Meyrick together with Andrew McLatchie and David Kearns, both food and wine connoisseurs. Meyrick’s foodie pursuits have taken him across the region, to places such as Hongkong where he owns bar and restaurant Lotus, as well as Sydney where he was behind Jimmy Liks and Longrain.

THE FOOD:
Modern Asian flavours including Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Malay infuse salads, stir fries, savoury braised curries and other creations.

We had a vegan among the four of us, so we opted for traditional Indian vegetarian samosas with a mint and coriander dressing to start the evening. Seafood and meat choices include Pacific oyster with nam jihm (a salty and sweet Vietnamese dressing) and coriander deep-fried shallots; and Peking duck rolls cucumber spring onion mandarin pancakes with a hoi sin dip.

The wait staff recommended a few dishes for our mains, which we thought were easy on the tastebuds and not too spicy or pungent. The spread included chicken tikka masala with garam masala ginger coriander and chilli, deep-fried crispy fish with three-flavour sauce and holy basil, and tandoori chicken butter chicken among others.

DRINKS:
Cocktails, reds and whites, and non-alcoholic beverages can be requested.

SERVICE:
Food was served in a quick and orderly manner. And our evening couldn’t have gotten any sweeter than when the waiter presented us with a complimentary round of dessert and fruit, which included deep-fried bananas with vanilla cashew-nut ice-cream, black sticky rice with lychees and mango ice-cream, and duck egg and ginger custard with palm sugar caramel, which certainly spelled heaven for the sugar lover.

PRICES:
About US$107 with drinks for four people.

VERDICT:
Food is described as “modern Asian”, a term I find fuzzy, but is of good quality. 

CONTACT:
19X Jalan Petitenget, Kerobokan, Kuta, Bali 80361, Indonesia, tel 62 361 737 809, www.sarongbali.com. Open daily from 7pm to 12am.

Julian Tan