DON’T WORRY, DRINK HAPPY SODA
You can bring your own drinks, but happiness is literally a soda (and definitely the sambal)
Indonesia is made up of 17,508 islands and 322 different types of sambal. While I can’t absolutely vouch for the accuracy of those googled statistics, I can tell you — with hand on rapidly beating heart — that a trip to Bali Nights will considerably broaden your knowledge of chilli-based condiments.
I’ve always thought of sambal as a kind of sludgy sauce. Chillies pounded with oil, spruiked with sour citrus or musty fish; fiery hot and as ubiquitous in some countries as Wattie’s is in this one. Food dictionaries tell me that sambal is, by broadest definition, a side dish that accompanies rice. At a restaurant off Ponsonby Rd, I have discovered it is a culinary chameleon — both supremely elegant and stupidly fun; a Tom Ford stiletto sandal splashing about in a puddle.
The sambal platter ($14) arrives as a trio of sophisticatedly balanced sauces, served alongside a children’s birthday party of rainbow-tinted tapioca crackers. Dip-tastedip for the perfect mix-and-match of texture, flavour and pleasure. Personal favourite: sambal matah, a raw Balinese specialty combining finely sliced shallots with chillies, lemongrass and lime leaf. Fresh, oily and not overly raw-oniony, I managed to eat almost an entire dish all by myself. Sorry-not-sorry.
My Indonesian travel experience is confined to just two of its islands — Java and Sumatra — on an off-the-beaten track news assignment that tasted like clove cigarettes and looked like the end of the world. The rainforests were burning and palm trees were being planted in their place. The air was so polluted that schools were closed; village heads told me the water was too contaminated to fish from. I ate a lot of rice and, when I got home, stopped eating anything that contained palm oil.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience; an inhalation of warmth on so many levels. The humidity, the hospitality, the solemn gaze of a rescued orangutan. We ate lunch on low plastic stools in roadside restaurants where everything from the fizzy drinks to the hardboiled eggs was the same blood temperature. Bali is, quite possibly, a whole other kettle of dried fish — except for the chairs.
Many of the fittings at Bali Nights have been imported from its island namesake. I perched precariously on a Barbie-pink plastic stool made for Barbie-sized bottoms. At the 30-minute mark, I felt like I’d been riding a bicycle for a month. When you book, the website advises you must return your table within 90 minutes. Allow extra to regain feeling in your lower limbs.
My dining companions were younger and considerably more flexible. One of them had actually been to Bali. She ordered a bowl of stir-fried peanuts and dried anchovies and declared herself even more homesick for travel than usual.
Teri kacang is a $10 snack dish begging for a beer, but I’d happily spoon it on to rice, mix in some sambal and call it dinner. (On that note: Bali Nights is BYO, with a $10 service fee per bottle of wine or six-pack.)
When in Indonesia, order the rendang. With its fruitcake spices and slow-cooked softness, it’s the curry for people who think they don’t like curry; a quite magical creature that comes together in the last transformative minutes of the cook when the essence of previous hours is distilled into something neither meat nor sauce — but also both. It was easily our favourite main dish and, next time, I’d probably just order the large size for the entire table ($42).
One of the features of Bali Nights is a wide range of dishes (including smaller portions of rendang — both meat and vegan) that don’t have to be shared. In truth, it was quite difficult to split a meatball broth with a multitude of noodles ($20 and pleasant enough, but definitely add sambal for pizzazz), while an impressively lacquered duck leg ($24) really just needed to be grasped with both hands and gnawed off the bone.
Vegetarians are extremely well cateredfor. No fake meats, just lots of tempeh and tofu; crunchy crackers and satay sauce. This reminds me to tell you that, if you do eat meat, get the sate ayam — skewers of chicken with a sweet, pineappley undertone and a rich peanut sauce ($30 for 10).
Bali Nights looks and tastes like a party. Dining there was a joyous experience, from the waitperson on his first night who sold the sambal with such genuine sincerity you’d think he’d made it himself to the $8 mug of soda water poured over pandaninfused syrup and condensed milk. Almost as pink as the chairs, it tasted like an old-fashioned icecream spider. Es soda gembira translates to “happy soda” and, while it will be too sweet for some, I defy you not to smile anyway.