Perfect fish and chips -- get it while you can

Trisha Sertori, ,  Contributor, ,  Bali   |  Thu, 01/08/2009 10:36 AM  |  Surfing Bali

The seafood basket comes close to perfect. (JP/Ying-lan Dann)

There is nothing better than a good feed of fish and chips by the beach. On the other hand, there is little worse than a lousy feed of the above.

On a recent weekend getaway to Padang Bai on Bali's east coast, my daughter and I had a shot at both.

There was no question where our first stop would be. For the past five years or so, this writer has headed to a favorite restaurant at Padang Bai beach, Puri Rai, for fresh fish and seafood, fabulous chips, salads straight from the garden as well as a great beach view and some of the best, friendliest service you could wish for.

Over the years, the food has been consistently excellent; in fact, meals at Puri Rai keep getting better and better. If they were top-notch five years ago, today they are splendid.

Prices at Puri Rai target the low to middle range of the tourist market. That means you can get fresh fish and chips, served with salad and three homemade sambals, for less than Rp 30,000.

But after having eaten lunch and dinner at Puri Rai for several days in a row, my daughter and I felt it was time to taste test some of the other local restaurants in the village.

We should have heeded the old advice, "when you are on a good thing stick to it". We got as far as one other restaurant.

Even the in-house cat refused the fish, politely offered from my plate. My daughter was looking decidedly green about the gills as she valiantly tried to address a meal wishfully called grilled marlin.

The chips were in a different category altogether. They appeared to be hand-me-downs from an earlier diner who had possibly had too much trouble with the fish to attempt the impossible with the chips. Prices here were also in the Rp 30,000 region.

Perhaps they were having an off day, but that experience put paid to our adventures outside of the culinary haven of Puri Rai.

There are no doubt many other excellent restaurants and warungs in Padang Bai, but for my money -- and taste buds -- the approach to food and service at Puri Rai is hard to beat.

The owners of Puri Rai, Komang Supriadi and his wife Susana, take food and hospitality seriously.

"We opened the restaurant in 1994 when I was 26 years old. Puri Rai was a lot smaller then, and my uncle, who owns the hotel, gave me the chance to run the restaurant," Komang said.

In those early days the restaurant overlooked a sandy beach where dozens of tourists swam and sunbathed. Local vendors and masseurs made a living selling much-needed sarongs and easing muscles stressed by carrying backpacks around the archipelago.

"There were a lot of backpackers then and they are still an important part of out client base," Komang said.

"But I am very worried that market is being killed off by development."

Doesn’t get much better than this: Fish and seafood served with potato wedges and fresh salad. (JP/Ying-lan Dann)

Padang Bai beach today is more a marina than a swimming beach. Where once visitors and locals would play and swim in the afternoon, now dozens of speedboats fill the only calm swimming beach, their mooring ropes tripping up walkers on the sand, their engine oil a slick on once green waters.

"There are so many boats and most of them are foreign owned," Komang said.

And while this loss of a safe swimming beach deeply concerns Komang, it is the loss of "the most beautiful beach in Bali", Biastugel, to Korean investors that breaks his heart.

"I worry because access to that beach would be lost to the development," Komang said.

"Bali's governor, Mangku Made Pastika, has stopped the development (of a 100-room five-star hotel) and declared the area a conservation zone. I love that man!

"But I am the only business in Padang Bai that understands what that development would do to the area."

Komang recognizes Padang Bai attracts tourists for its tranquility and difference to other Bali tourist destinations.

He also recognizes that monolithic resorts often sap the lifeblood from villages, in the same way supermarkets and malls drown local greengrocers, bakeries and butcher shops.

"I don't want Padang Bai to change, especially the hill above the wharf and the access to Biastugel Beach," Komang said.

"I am sure more and more tourists will come and stay here because of that beach. That is the last natural beach we have."

Of the four beaches in the area, he points out, Padang Bai has been lost to boats and Blue Lagoon to development, and the Black Sand beach is "too hot and rough" for swimmers.

"That's why we need Biastugel Beach (to be protected). This beach is like a diamond, like a star to the people of Padang Bai."

So head to Padang Bai this weekend for a perfect feed of fish and chips at Puri Rai while the village is still there.

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