Bali's food revolution - and all the best places to eat right now

"The stereotype of the cuisine is that it is made up only of nasi goreng, satay and gado-gado, but there's much more than that. Indonesian food is incredibly diverse and fascinating," says Janet DeNeefe.

Owner of Casa Luna restaurant and founder of the Ubud Food Festival, Melbourne-born DeNeefe has called Ubud home since the mid-1980s. Then, it was a backwater with just a couple of "warungs" (small, family-owned cafes.) These days, it and the tourist enclaves of Canggu, Seminyak and Kuta thrum with restaurants, cafes and bars; the laidback lifestyle and natural abundance proving potent attractants to chefs and restaurateurs from all over the globe. Conversely, many local chefs have travelled and returned, bringing with them fresh ideas and a new-born interest in their traditional cuisine.

While Indonesian food is incredibly regional, DeNeefe says Balinese cuisine can be distinguished by its spices.

"It's a powerhouse of flavour, marked by the combination of fresh gingers and spices like coriander seeds, pepper, nutmeg and cumin, with aromatics and loads of chilli."

A spice paste known as "bumbu Bali", the cornerstone of Balinese cuisine, is the very first thing we learn at Mai Organic Farm and Cooking School in the village of Pejeng, about 20 minutes' drive east of Ubud.

"We use it in everything," our teacher, Apung, tells us.

The farm and school's founder, Kadek Kamardiyana, left his job as operations manager of a tour company in Kuta in 2016, to return to his ancestral home and start a community farm to teach farmers and villagers about eco-friendly agriculture.

Two years later, his savings depleted, he enlisted the support of an NGO and a team of volunteers to establish a cooking school, giving visitors the opportunity to learn something of the food of Bali while supporting the village and farmers.

"We decided to create a tourism activity - a collaboration between eco-friendly agriculture and eco-friendly tourism and came up with the farm tour and cooking class - an authentic farm-to-table experience," Kamardiyana says.

The Mai farm and school employs Pejeng locals; from the driver who collects us from Ubud, to the chefs and assistants. The income generated supports the community with youth activities such as volleyball teams and traditional music lessons, has instigated day care in the local Montessori school and provides lunches for the children. It collaborates with local artisans and craftspeople and buys goods, such as coconut oil and charcoal, from the villagers.

After introducing ourselves, we don our provided straw hats and start with a farm tour.

In my class are three professional chefs; one English and two from the Netherlands; a couple of American digital nomads/yoga students, a Canadian, and a New York-based Ukrainian who possesses a bone-dry wit, her bon mots delivered without the slightest change of inflection or facial expression. Usually, I'm told, there are more Australians, but today it's just me.

The farm is small, at just two hectares, but no space is wasted. Scrappy roosters scatter as we walk under trellises of large yellow passionfruit, past bamboo stakes supporting vines of snake beans as long as our forearms, and young pawpaw trees heavy with fruit. Apung tells us what everything is used for and explains the concept of "subak" - the complex co-operative irrigation system that was born in the 9th century and is still used to bring water to the rice fields around the village.

We walk among the rows of herbs and vegetables such as eggplant, leafy greens and a rainbow of chillies, collecting ingredients as instructed - some of which are familiar, like the turmeric, galangal, holy basil and razor-edged stalks of lemongrass, while others, such as red torch ginger, are new to me. The herbs are added to a base of candlenuts, cloves, coriander seeds, peppercorns, sesame, nutmeg and cumin - a mix known as "base wangen" - to make the bumbu Bali, which will be used in every dish today bar dessert.

At a long wooden table in an open-air pavilion, we dice the roots, leaves and spices, then take turns pounding the mix in a long-handled mortar and pestle set on the floor. Under the instruction of chef Wayan, who steams rice in a basket over an open flame, we also grind peanuts for satay, and lemongrass, coconut oil, chilli and holy basil to make a fragrant "sambal matah", to serve with "sate lilit" - a traditional Balinese kebab made with minced tuna.

We're shown how to wrap minced tofu, bumbu Bali, curry leaves and chilli in banana leaves to be grilled over charcoal, along with tempeh (made from fermented soybeans), threaded onto skewers.

After a morning learning about Balinese culinary traditions, we lay banana leaves on plates for the spiced corn fritters that chef Wayan has fried, and proudly take the dishes we've made to the table for a shared feast, serenaded by the gentle cluck of chickens.

Bumbu Bali is also used in another Balinese classic, "babi guling" - stuffed suckling pig lacquered with sweet coconut water and hand-turned over flame for hours. According to DeNeefe, babi guling has almost attained cult status in Bali, where the population is majority Hindu rather than Muslim.

"Every village has a favourite 'warung' that sells it and they are all different. But, in general, the meat should be sweet and tender, and the crackling paper-thin, crisp and golden," she says.

Despite being surrounded by water, chef Ryan Thejasukmana, of Bartolo Bali and the newly opened Lulu Bistrot, points out that meat rules over seafood on Bali menus.

"Our biggest and best fish are always exported and what we have for sale in the markets here is very cheap," he says, "so people are reluctant to spend money on it in restaurants - they'd rather buy wagyu."

Thejasukmana is typical of many of Bali's young chefs who spend some time working abroad, in his case, in Australia, including nine months at Bennelong at the Sydney Opera House.

Returning to Bali in 2019, he was determined to elevate seafood in locals' minds, as well as the way the product was treated by the fishermen themselves. His side-business, Empak Locale - meaning "place to get fish" in the dialect of his Lombok island home - sources the best quality Indonesian fish for chefs and educates them, and the fishermen who make the catch, in sustainable practices.

"If fish here starts to be more valued by people, then that will help the fishermen to do the same - the quality will be better and we'll have a more sustainable industry," he says.

Bali has also seen a growing interest in farm-to-table dining, with the number of small producers and farmers increasing during COVID, a time when imports became difficult, Thejasukmana says.

"Lot of Europeans who were here, as well as locals, started organic farms then and we started seeing lots of quality, organic veg we didn't have before - many varieties of heritage tomatoes and brassica, for example."

Another unexpected COVID side-effect has been the elevation of local chefs.

"During the time when Bali was closed, the Indonesian media started to focus on its own local chefs," Thejasukmana says, "and we began to receive a lot more interest."

That attention saw locals grow in esteem and confidence in an industry whose top end had largely been dominated by foreign chefs, and today an ever-growing number of restaurants are helmed or owned by Indonesian chefs.

"There are so many impressive chefs in the region that are doing wonderful things - I love the creativity of the new young breed of Indonesian chefs," says DeNeefe, who champions many of them through the Ubud Food Festival.

So given the breadth of its cuisine and abundance of produce and talent, why isn't the food of Indonesia considered as seriously as neighbouring Asian countries? Thejasukmana reckons it's been difficult to elevate the cuisine of Bali, in particular, because tourists expect it to be cheap.

"But slowly, slowly, that is changing, with more incoming chefs and a growing appreciation of the food," he says.

Perhaps in the future, Indonesian will become as ubiquitous on our shores as Thai or Vietnamese, but in the meantime, checking out Bali's fast-forward food scene in person seems like a deliciously compelling reason to visit.

With a dynamic dining scene and eclectic mix of regional cuisines, narrowing down where to choose to eat in Bali can be tough. Ubud Food Festival founder Janet deNeefe and chef Ryan Thejasukmana share some of their favourites.

JANET DENEEFE RECOMMENDS:

Club Soda, Canggu: If you're looking for somewhere lively, Club Soda, under chef Ferdinando Tendean, is tucked away in a quiet residential area, and a focus on music, cocktails and Japanese- influenced share plates.

SKOOL Kitchen, Caggu: Overlooking Batu Bolong, SKOOL is known for chef Vallian Gunawan's modern, produce-driven, flame-licked food; fish, meat, vegetables and even desserts cooked on flames.

Nusantara, Ubud: Headed by Balinese chef, I Putu Dodik Sumarjana, who started with this group (who also own Restaurant Locavore ) when he was just 18, Nusantara is the perfect place to try food from all over the archipelago.

Gung Cung, Ubud: My personal favourite for babi guling in Ubud. The pig here is stuffed with a particular spice mix, including mango leaves, then brushed with coconut water and cooked over coffee and clove wood for 4 hours.

Bartolo, Uluwatu and Lulu Bistrot, Canggu: Bartolo is a European-bistro style and Ryan Thejasukmana has just opened Lulu Bistrot - a classic French menu with a focus on the Mediterranean region. I love his passion for seafood.

RYAN THEJASUKMANA RECOMMENDS:

Riung Rasa Smokehouse & Grill, Jimbaran: Features a short menu of Indonesian dishes all cooked or smoked over charcoal and wood - a little bit of seafood, but mostly meat. The smoked brisket with a mix of sambal is a favourite.

T & T Chindo's Chinese, Kerobokan: I eat here at least once or twice a week. It's a really casual, affordable Chinese-influenced Indonesian food, with amazing nasi babi - pork belly and other meats with rice and fermented soy beans, chilli and pickles, as well as great springy noodles.

Fed by Made, Seminyak: These guys started cooking when they met in Melbourne, then began doing pop-ups when they came back to Bali before opening their own place. There's a six-course set menu, that changes monthly - simple, international dishes, but using uncommon ingredients.

Braud Café, Seminyak: This is where I get my daily dose of coffee and pastry. They started as a wholesale bakery making artisan breads, but have opened a café in Seminyak. My tip is to come around 8am or 9am when the croissants are just out of the oven.

Warung Babi Guling Pande Egi: Overlooking rice fields outside Ubud, Warung Babi Guling Pande Egi, is probably number one for babi guling in Bali. It's cheap and you'll find about 90% of the diners are locals.

Staying there: Puri Saraswati Dijiwa have bungalows in a leafy garden in central Ubud with a pool and breakfast from about $165 a double in a Saraswati Classic bungalow. dijiwasanctuaries.com

Cooking there: Classes at Mai Organic Farm and Cooking School are $US35 ($52) and include pick up from Ubud, farm tour, lunch and take-home recipes. maiorganicbali

For the diary: Ubud Food Festival is an annual four-day event usually held at the end of June/beginning of July. ubudfoodfestival.com