Before I dive straight in to where to eat in Ubud, I'm going to give you a little back story as to why I was in the beautiful calming land of Bali.
I had always dreamed of visiting Bali, it looked so picturesque and beautiful in pictures. So for mine and Joe's honeymoon, we decided Bali was the one. And being the foodies that we both are, we went to some pretty lavish restaurants. It was our honeymoon after all...
Firstly let's talk about
Mozaic. Mozaic is claimed to be one of the best restaurants in Ubud and is listed in San Pellegrino Top 100 restaurants in the world, pretty darn impressive.
I did my research before we went here and everyone had nothing but great things to say. So we booked beforehand, and then indulged in a beautiful French fine-dining experience.
"The big adventure at Mozaic has been discovering new ingredients, new flavours and incorporating them into French techniques. I strive to raise little-known Indonesian ingredients to the prestige level of truffles, caviar, foie gras." - Chris Salans.
Chris Salans is the Chef Owner and has worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris and the US. So we felt extremely lucky to experience one of his restaurants during our honeymoon.
We indulged in an six course menu ('The Discovery Menu'), with an additional special honeymoon dish which was completely unexpected, but so lovely of them to do.
All dishes were beautifully presented and delicious. Out of all the dishes, I'd say the tiger prawn dish was my favourite! But every single one was interesting in their own individual way.
I also liked their choices of cocktails - they were so unique and had so many to choose from.
If you prefer wine with your dinner, they have a wine tasting menu to go alongside the dishes too.
What I really like about this restaurant was the idea that the 'Discovery Menu' focuses on fresh seasonal Indonesian ingredients but still creating these beautifully presented European styled dishes.
I can't say it was the best food I've ever eaten in my life but I enjoyed the experience none the less.
The only downside to this restaurant was the service was a little slow. But aside from that we really enjoyed our fine-dining experience here and would highly recommend coming here if you're in Ubud.
Kubu at Mandapa. Firstly let me start by apologising, I'm really gutted that I didn't get the photographs that I wanted here to do this review properly, it was so dark and the quality was not great (damn my perfection ways). They just didn't compare to my Mozaic photo's so I was a little ashamed to put them up. However, I used flash on two of the dishes and I thought it would be better to include these ones than none at all.
Anyway, oh my, what a heavenly beautiful experience. If you're in Ubud and love fine dining or perhaps your on your honeymoon too, you have to go here!
We sat in a romantic private cocoon overlooking the river. It was night time when we went, so we couldn't really see the river, but it was calming to listen to. A really lovely atmosphere.
The food is fine Mediterranean-European. You can choose from the Degustation courses where you can choose between six courses or eight. They do have other main courses if you don't fancy little tastes of everything.
We went for the six course and each individual course was absolutely amazing. And they even brought out a lovely honeymoon cake as an extra dish (likewise to what Mozaic did), which was completely unexpected too! It was an interesting chocolate bomb. AH-mazing.
The service was also outstandingly good. We did over stay our welcome a bit - we were the last ones out the door as we didn't realise it was closing. We got carried away chatting and reminiscing about the wedding... But, they let us take our time and fully enjoy our stay, even if it was gone midnight...
I highly highly recommend coming here. Every time I think of Ubud, I remind myself how amazing the food was here. Everything was cooked to perfection and it's in a beautiful location.
I standby and can happily say that Kubu at Mandapa was one of the best food experiences and best atmosphere's I've ever had in my life. Each dish was so stunning and I was impressed with all the little details as well as making it taste perfect.
A little tip from me would be if you plan on going here, do book a couple days beforehand as the cocoon's do tend to get booked up as there are only nine of them.
Also, I know it's hard to fully appreciate what every course looked like when I only shared two photo's, but check out my
honeymoon vlog where I recorded snippets of all the courses towards the end of the vlog.
I hope this was some what helpful if you're planning to come to Ubud and fancy some lavish meals.
I've never actually experienced fine-dining before and now I'm happy to stay I experienced two highly rated places in Ubud. If I had to choose one out of the two, for me personally it would be Kubu as it was to my taste, but they were both incredible experiences.
Right, time to crack on with the day. I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend!
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