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FOOD | Jan 14, 2010

Metis is New Kid on Bali Restaurant Block

For more than a decade, Bali’s legendary Kafe Warisan thrilled the palates of well-heeled residents, expatriates and tourists with its selection of French cuisine. So when news spread that it was closing in early October last year, many were disappointed.

They need not have worried. The duo behind Warisan’s stellar reputation — Said Alem and Nicolas Tourneville, better known as Doudou — wasted no time in opening another restaurant a few blocks from the old establishment.

I quickly succumbed to the urge to take a look at the new venture, Metis, located on Jalan Petitenget, Bali’s hottest “eat street.”

A few friends and I left our cozy burrows in Ubud and headed out for Metis. Curious, but not terribly hungry, all we wanted was a salad or dessert.

Metis, which prides itself in providing patrons with “an entirely sensory dining experience,” is beyond a simple restaurant. Stepping inside the low-lit, minimalist building, guests can see the separate rooms leading into the main dining area through the glass panes.

An upscale gallery and a boutique selling jewelry and women’s accessories are located adjacent to each other on one side of the restaurant. On the other is a tempting, brightly lit cake parlor.

Metis’s menu is divided into several categories: starters, meat and poultry, soup and pasta, seafood and dessert. There is a separate menu for foie gras selections and a more-than-decent wine list.

Some of the flowery names given to the dishes sounded mouth-watering: Moroccan lamb rack mechoui with pumpkin couscous and vegetable ragout, for instance, or the duck consomme with black truffle and chicken pistachio quenelles .

Not up for anything heavy, I opted for the latter. My friends chose the salad with the longest name — baked oven roasted tomato and pumpkin with goat cheese, wild rucola, pine nuts, balsamic reduction — and a dessert of morello cherries and pistachio creme brulee.

Drinks are moderately priced, including the alcoholic ones, and cover a wide variety, including fresh juices, shakes and flavored martinis.

While waiting for our orders, we sneaked into the colorful cake parlor. Some of the goods on display, like the many-flavored macaroons, can be found at Bali Catering Company, a cake shop on Jalan Petitenget also established by the restaurant owners. We ordered the Choc Mousse Blackberry Jelly, which was deliciously sweet, and a Yuzu Green Tea Cake, which was refreshing on the outside but sour inside, thanks to citrus flakes.

Served on large white plates, both were elaborately decorated.

Then our main courses arrived.

My duck consomme was runny and pitch-black, and there was an aftertaste of nuts in it.

The flavor wasn’t as strong as I had hoped, even with the truffles, though the three quenelles swimming in it were silky and finely made. The dish of the evening was the salad. The combination of oven-roasted chunks of tomato, slices of pumpkin and the balsamic was excellent.

The tomatoes surprisingly retained their firmness so that not much juice flowed out.

The rucola, pine nuts and goat cheese brought flavorsome succulence to the plate.

For dessert, the creme brulee got all the aspects right, but the overall taste was rather inconclusive, although it was just shy of brilliant.

Metis successfully evokes a low-key, warm-tropical evening kind of mood through its U-shaped seating plan.

But its contemporary colonial-style architecture won’t be a strong enough selling point, as there are plenty of nearby restaurants with similar, but more flamboyant, settings.

The whole dining area overlooks a strip of greenery that feels like a lush backyard. There is an ultra-posh, air-conditioned, 12-seat wine cellar for private dining and wine tasting, and a spacious room upstairs that can hold up to 100 people, mostly for special functions.

The waiters are also alert and knowledgeable and can advise on food and wine.

But only time — and regular customers — will tell whether Metis lives up to the greatness of its closed predecessor.

Right now, however, it’s fun to have Metis dish out fabulous French food and to watch how the restaurant fares in the fiercely competitive air of Bali’s fine-dining scene.

Source: The Jakarta Globe

Indonesian Lifestyle 2008