Locavore NXT – Nature’s Compass Tasting Menu, Ubud Bali
Words: Monica Tindall
Photos: Han Sen Hau
My last visit to Locavore was in July 2022, where I caught the tail-end of their closing menu. They were set to shut down shop in September in preparation for Locavore NXT. Only hints were given about what was next for the team, but everyone knew it would be exciting.
I was already a huge fan, admiring their unwavering commitment to local – if it’s not grown in Bali, it’s not on the menu. But I’m ecstatic to return to see the evolution, or rebellion as they call it. “Let nature lead the way” is the motto, and Locavore NXT deeply honours the living world and its natural systems.
Locavore NXT – Nature’s Compass
The excursion begins down a narrow plant-lined alley as our Grab delivers us to The Shed. Like Harry Potter at King’s Cross Station with Platform 9¾, there’s a magic that The Shed is the gateway to something extraordinary. After registering and refreshing with a moist towel, we’re led down a garden path, past an animated installation art piece, to the bar.
The high-ceilinged, window-walled bar is crowned with a glass dome and stunning views of rice paddy fields ready to harvest. The bar is built around a banana tree, and the roof seems to be staggered in layers, much like the seats in an amphitheatre, only in reverse. A sea-grape-shaped chandelier and giant wooden breadfruits are among several functional art pieces. There are shelves and shelves of fermenting things in large glass jars and a glass-enclosed kitchen where the first snack is being prepared.
We’ve signed up for the Nature’s Compass tasting menu (IDR 1 950 000++) with alcoholic drinks pairing (IDR 850 000++). Vegan, vegetarian and non-alcoholic pairings are also options.
Into the wild…
We start with a cocktail, a twist on a Garibaldi with banana arak, pomelo juice and a few drops of sea lettuce oil. Then a tray of wild ingredients with headphone sets, the Audio Landscape, is delivered. We put on the headphones and immerse ourselves in the world of ingredients we’re about to find on our table. It’s an introduction to the tasting menu, Nature’s Compass. We “walk” with the audio to “forage” for our first ingredient.
Twenty-one types of leaves, flowers and fruits are on the plate with a tofu ant egg emulsion and salt flower powder for dipping. Our server has forgotten to mention the snake-like, dragon-like creatures hiding beneath the garden. It turns out they’re tiny deep-fried freshwater eels. This diverse range of plants has come from Locavore NXT’s rooftop food forest, an impressive, biodiverse garden in the sky.
Foraged & Ugly Mushrooms
For the next course, Foraged, we enter a huge Balinese carved door at the end of the bar. At first appearance, it looks like an ornate traditional piece. However, there’s much to find in a second, more profound look, such as the UFO abducting a pig in the top right corner. Let me know what else you find.
Next, we disappear down a black staircase, the “root system” to the basement, passing the mushroom chamber where an assortment of fungi are grown to the B.I.O. library. This magnificent data centre showcases a 3D scan and in-depth explanation of all of the ingredients used in the restaurant.
It’s time to take our next snack, one we “forage” ourselves from what looks like a large terrarium. Soybean jelly, pickled mushrooms, cashew yoghurt, and kulim (jungle garlic) cream are topped with kluwak puree, honeycomb, and pickled flowers inside a kluak shell. It’s accompanied by ugly mushroom tea – “ugly” because the trimmings have been used. The leftovers of oyster, golden oyster and chestnut mushrooms have been boiled down, deglazed with arak, and dotted with long-pepper oil. It’s all very delicious.
Main Dining Room
We’ve noticed how smoothly things run and that every guest gets a personal escort for each experience. So far, we’ve had contact with around ten staff, but when we arrive at the main dining room, we notice an army! There are so many youngsters here (we later learn around 100), and they’re mostly under 25! We query the excellent recruitment program that must be in place at Locavore NXT but discover that most of the team have found Locavore, not the other way around. What an exciting place to be – one of Southeast Asia’s coolest restaurants and working with purpose. Not many more adult employees could claim the same.
The main dining room surrounds an open kitchen alive with movement. A light panel of red words lights up a news ticker listing everything that it takes in – the “stream of consciousness.” It’s like a crazy artificial intelligence absorbing its surroundings and spitting out what it sees and hears without making any sense of it – guests’ names, menu items, and ingredients. In another corner, there’s a giant chandelier made from oversized blue and white Dutch plates, bowls and vases. There are details in every corner, but now the starters begin to arrive, so there’s no time to take it all in.
Starters – Main Dining Hall
Charred SCOBY
Charred SCOBY—literally the scoby that floats on top of kombucha—with mushrooms, fungi amazake, and mulberry greens sits in a small, imperfect bowl. It’s slightly sweet, earthy, and savoury and leaves a thin coat of oil in the mouth. It’s an intriguing beginning.
Fermented Tofu
The second bite features fermented tofu, pumpkin, and sago pearls. It starts with a thin corn cracker base, followed by pickled pumpkin, tofu, and fermented sago pearls. We pop the whole thing in our mouths and enjoy it in a single bite. It has a great texture and a chewy base.
The first two snacks are accompanied by Jatiluwih brown rice ale. It’s sour and naturally carbonated, and its sharp finish slices through its richness.
Savoury Fruit
Next is a bowl of savoury fruit – dehydrated watermelon with passionfruit, banana miso, and two types of cherry tomatoes (one sweet, the other salty). The actual “peas” of the butterfly pea (we often see the flowers, not the fruit), sea bean leaves, peanut milk ice cream and banana yoghurt are dotted around the plate, and all the components are showered with fermented tomato sauce. We mix it all together, trying to get a bit of everything in each spoon. It’s hard to describe, but sweetness transforms into pungency, then herbaceous notes and finally, spice leaves a light tingle on the tongue.
The roasted noni tonic is no less enthralling. The fruit, similar to soursop, is included in the arak distillation process, giving what Han Sen promptly describes as ” if they could make champagne from cheese.”
Cassava Noodles
We smell the skatewing fish floss as the cassava noodles are delivered. The noodles are thick with a nice chew to them. They’re coated with sea urchin sauce and dusted with a powder of dried mung beans. A zero-waste dashi (zero-waste because it’s made from fish trimmings) is poured over upon serving. It’s best to mix them all together to maximise the creaminess and eat them while hot, i.e. hurry up with the photos.
Mango arak, mixed with lacto-fermented mango and finished off with curry oil drops, partners the noodles. The sweet and savoury profile complements the complexity of the cassava noodles.
We take a moment to reflect on the experience so far and sum it up as “a surprise at every turn.”
Raw Lamb
Tableside preparation of raw lamb from central Java resembles a traditional beef tartare. LabX condiments are homemade gochujang, lacto-fermented matoa fruit from Kalimantan, pickled genjer plant buds (resembling capers), koshu made with calamansi, shallots, spring onions, egg yolk and, lastly, miso from petai stinky beans. It’s mixed together tableside, emulsifying the ingredients and bringing together the umami, savoury, and spice notes you might expect from the more common tartate, which is an excellent match to the faint gaminess of the lamb. We take a spoon of the tartare on its own and then fold it in with the matoa and jack fruit seeds taco, which has been nixtamalised like a traditional taco.
As if that wasn’t a mouthful (hee, hee), there’s more! A genjer pickle and bergonia flower act as palate cleansers alongside the beverage pairing – clarified pineapple mixed with arak and Nusantara spices (a blend of cardamon, star anise, lemongrass and cloves). Once more, our palates are challenged, and we’re eager to follow.
Work in Progress – In the Lab
We take an intermission between starters and mains with a visit to the experimentation lab. Passing through the staff canteen before and various other areas such as the fermentation lab and dry store after, we gain insight into the scale of the operation. In the lab, there’s a plate of pickled snake fruit, a banana blackened in the vacuum sealer until liquid, a slice of vegan cheese made from kenari nuts, and black koji amazake honey jam for the tasting. It’s a curious interlude, allowing us to stretch our legs and see another part of the facility.
Mains
Tempeh
Back in the main dining hall, we’re ready for the mains. The Locavore NXT team always tries to keep a tempeh dish on the menu as it is emblematic of Indonesian cuisine. This menu’s version is made with cassava and red and yellow taro. It sits in a fermented cassava sauce with a scoop of Malang apple sauce on the side mixed with caramel kombucha. A trio of perfectly placed sweet potato leaves guard the top, and it’s finished off the tableside with drops of black sesame tahini. Hard apple cider made from the Malang apple leftovers from the sauce is an excellent mate – it’s a tart and harmonising ending.
Catch of the Day & Rice Koji Porridge
The catch of the day, the red snapper, has been torched inside a bulun baon leaf. It comes with two tasty sauces – a velouté made from kenari nuts and spicy salted fish sauce. We try the sauces independently, first the milder white and then the stronger orange. We scoop rice koji porridge, cooked like a risotto with shitake broth, resisting the urge to eagerly use it to soak up the rest of the sauces. It comes with its own condiments of soybeans, white kimchi, local basil and rosella, making it tasty enough to be an independent dish – so make sure you try it unaccompanied first. The semi-sweet mead is dry enough to allow the sweetness of the fish to shine but leaves a pleasant but faint Sulawesi honeyed finish in the mouth.
Kampung Chicken
The kampung chicken dish is presented with a caution, “Don’t expect anything usual.” The chicken has been made into a mousseline and wraps around a spiny lobster. It has an almost sausage-like texture. A vanilla and stinky bean sauce spills over the top, dusted with coffee powder. This, too, comes with a side dish – a vibrant, spring-green tangle of chayote leaves, sunflower petals and rose apple dressed in a simple yet refreshing vinaigrette. Bamboo leaf-infused arak mixed with lacto-fermented jackfruit and roasted rice stem is the chicken’s mate. I find the overall combination seesawing towards the too-pungent side (it’s not really, but jackfruit and bamboo shoots are not my favourites). Han Sen, on the other hand, loves it. I’m happy to top up his glass.
Aged ‘Bangkal Hitam’ Pork
The final main course is dry-aged ‘Bangkal Hitam’ pork. The local black pig has been marinated in rice koji for seven days. It comes with a dot of breadfruit puree, young ferns, peanut leaves and a generous scoop of oyster XO sauce. Fufu, or fermented cassava, is served apart with caramelised coconut on top. It’s a sticky consistency; I imagine what a melted mochi might be like. Our server suggests taking a slice of the pork solo and then with the rest of the ingredients. The pork’s mate, burnt coconut doburoku (the stage before fermented rice becomes sake), is a smooth sweet complement.
Surprise Dish
A surprise dish, made-from-waste granita, bridges the mains and dessert. Leftover bits of fruit, such as passionfruit, watermelon, lychee and kaffir lime, are turned into an icy mound. Floral pet nat (one of the oldest forms of sparkling wine) with lantana flowers is poured over just before we scoop in. It’s bright and fresh, and I imagine changes in profile depending on the day’s waste.
Dessert
As a pre-dessert, daluman (leaf) jelly comes with burnt coconut sauce, a burnt coconut crumble, soursop jelly, and sorbet. Despite being inspired by the traditional Balinese dessert daluman, there’s no palm sugar here. Instead, it sports more of a fruity sour finish and that signature smoky coconut flavour so unique to Bali.
The main dessert is inspired by everything found in northern Bali. Coffee cake, then a spiced cashew fruit compote and salted caramel cream, are blanketed with paper-thin cashew fruit pulp leather and juice. Enjoy it quickly, as the leather melts fast.
The dessert line-up has been one of the most interesting and delicious I’ve encountered. The flavours are familiar but curious, recognisable but unexpected. They’re exceptionally well balanced, making each dish exciting and novel but also something that could quickly be adapted as part of our regular diet.
The final beverage pairing is a smooth and fruity aloe vera liqueur with clarified soursop and a spray of Andaliman pepper hydrosol. We’ve reached the end of beverage pairing with drink number 10! Despite the double figures, we’re still perfectly coherent and agree that, even though it seems a lot to drink, the servings have been small enough for us to appreciate the experience without getting wasted.
Petite Fours & Hot Beverages
As the meal draws to a close, we’re presented with a choice of hot beverages—a selection of single-origin coffee, barista’s choice cocktails (an additional IDR 95k), tea blends (each with a different wellness focus), and hot chocolate from Korte, a small-batch Indonesian cacao company.
Han Sen picks the most beloved concluding beverage at Locavore NXT, hot chocolate. It’s made with 63% Gaura dark chocolate and a blend of non-dairy mylks – glutinous rice, cassava and cashew. It’s decadently sided with whipped toasted cashew cream. Our server suggests the Kenari as the barista’s choice cocktail as it’s stood the test of several menus and still remains strong. It’s a twist on a Mai Tai with toasted coconut arak, Aceh Gayo wet hull espresso, ylang-ylang liqueur, kenari nut orgeat, honey pineapple and tepache de coco, garnished with tepache de coco jelly cubes.
To partner our drinks, little parcels of chewy coconut are filled with mulberry jam topped and dusted with mulberry and kaffir lime powder. They sit prettily on a tangle of large leaves and petite flowers. We appreciate the acidity invigorating the palate. All things breadfruit are breadfruit fritters filled with breadfruit toffee, crowned with pickled breadfruit slices and cinnamon powder. We bite the chewy fritter in half, then fill the middle with additional toffee sauce until it spills over the brim.
You can take the final drinks and sweets at your table or bar. It’s a lovely transition, slowly bidding guests farewell as they leave.
Reasons to visit Locavore NXT: a one-of-a-kind experience, exceptional efforts in sustainability, an inspirational crew of youngsters working with passion on the project, great beverage pairings, and 100% of ingredients coming from Bali. Locavore NXT is a MUST for serious foodies.
Locavore NXT
Jl. A.A. Gede Rai Gang Pura Panti Bija, Lodtunduh
Kecamatan Ubud, Kabupaten Gianyar, Bali 80571, Indonesia
Link to Locavore NXT on Google Maps
0821-4495-6226
locavorenxt.com @locavorenxt
Locavore NXT Opening Hours
Monday – Wednesday: 5:30 pm – 11 pm
Thursday – Saturday: 12 – 1:30 pm & 5:30 pm – 11 pm
Sunday: Closed
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