All about taste

When we tell people that we live in Bali their reaction is always one of jealousy. They instantly assume a tranquil life of surfing, sunsets and total utter relaxation. Well, unfortunately, the reality couldn’t be farther from the truth as we don’t surf, the last sunset we saw was almost a year ago and we are constantly running around stressed. The reason is simple: since we moved to Bali six years ago we were determined to add FOOD to the list of reasons people come to visit this beautiful island paradise.

Food here 10 years ago was either simple inexpensive local “warungs” serving deliciously traditional cooking or huge luxury hotels with extravagant cliff top fine dinings boasting the best of the world’s imported ingredients. The entire mid-level casual dining market did not exist and that’s exactly how we saw ourselves fitting in. We would simply take all the attention to detail, passion and precise cooking of those expensive fine dining joints but use the fabulous local ingredients available in traditional markets. The result is something different with big exotic flavors and affordable pricing providing a new style of casual dining called "Cuca".

Being too relaxed for the tuxedo-wearing glamorous socialites and too gourmet for the thrifty island surfer, Cuca found its market with the obsessed food driven gourmet traveler. The people that plan their days not only based on where to go and what to see but what delicious things they want to eat.  If you find yourself among the few who plan a trip around finding those wonderful places serving food made with love and eating mouthfuls of culture and magic, you may want to consider a trip our way.

Cuca's classic Crispy Fried Chicken: all about taste.

New year, new travels, new ideas

Changing a menu in a restaurant may sound simple but I assure you it is not. First, in Cuca we must identify which items to remove from the current menu that will hopefully avoid anger and frustration when that die-hard foodie returns for his favorite dish and it is no longer there. Second, we need to find new amazing products from all over Indonesia that actually arrive when we order them. Third, the new food must be our best attempt at giving a customer the best dish he has ever eaten, otherwise what’s the point of putting it on the menu?

If all those things actually get done, we are then only left with updating and printing the menus, changing the website, creating the costing and buttons for the sales system, taking the new dish photos, re-printing the waiter order taking cards, updating kitchen recipes, training the entire kitchen and dining room team, sending the press releases, redoing all the food allergy information to ensure no one ever eats something they can’t and finally timing all of this to come together and be ready on the very same day.

You can then understand that once those new items hit the menu we feel just as proud parents delivering them to the world and totally exhausted. The truth is we don’t change the menu often in Cuca mainly because it’s tough to make the best thing anyone has ever eaten.

Delicious takes time but let me tell you what made the cut for our next menu change in Cuca. All available from February 1. 

Hot Potatoes: onion fudge, charred scallions, spiced keluak gravy
We are proud to deliver the religious experience of biting into the molten creamy delicious happiness of a classic Spanish croquette. Our filling instead is inspired by the timeless cooking of Indonesia as we recently discovered in a market in Toraja. The dish becomes mysterious by our use of the local fruit “keluak”, one of the most unique ingredients we have ever tasted with its earthy hints reminiscent of dark chocolate, toasted almond and olives. A flavor like no other.

Hawaiian Cracker: double smoked ham, melting cheese, clove spiced pineapple
Inspired by the legendary Hawaiian pizza, our version is flavored with both thin slices of lightly salted, deeply smoked, cured ham and gently poached ribbons of pineapple scented with clove. These succulent morsels are left standing on a wafer-thin multi-seed cracker that shatters like glass when broken apart. It’s not really pizza, it is one hell of a cracker!

Ricotta Gnocchi: cheese dumplings, roasted watermelon, sun-dried tomato pesto
3 months of recipe testing finally came to an end with these soft pillowy mouthfuls of tender silky fresh cheese. Inspired by the humble Italian classic “Gnocchi Pomodoro”, we use roasted watermelon to mimic the sweetness of delicate braised tomatoes and add the tomatoes instead to a sauce that brings the dish to a brighter level. We’re not Italian but we think we won this one hands down.

Bali Soft Taco: homemade brown rice tortillas, braised mushrooms, chili salsa 
After 21 days in Mexico, we now understand Tacos. We ate many and even when bad they are actually still pretty good. So, determined to serve tacos in Cuca, we decided to make the most delicious taco entirely vegan and have no one know that those charred strings of moist tender meat are actually slow braised onions and mushrooms. We crafted a super unique tortilla from organic local brown rice and created a crunchy topping of grilled fresh coconuts. Bali now has Tacos!   

Why Cuca?

8 years ago, we arrived in Bali with two suitcases and a big dream. Literally! We had one year to finalize a concept, find a location, build a restaurant, hire and train a team, open our doors and start serving customers. It was a daunting task. So, just like when you go to the grocery store you write a list to make sure you do not forget anything, we wrote a massive “to do” list: from designing an entire kitchen to the color of the napkins, everything was important and nothing could be forgotten.

One of the items on the list was “What on earth are we going to name the restaurant?” and it never seemed to get done. A name is a restaurant’s identity and is hugely important. It must be memorable, meaningful and unique to stand out from the sea of food options. At the same time, if it is too weird no one will ever spell it or get it right. I remember back in the day, the best restaurant in Vancouver, my city, was called “West”. It was a French-inspired concept with amazingly creative and tasty food, but they decided to spell it like in France “Ouest”. The result was an empty dining room and a city left wondering where the hell the restaurant was. You couldn’t find it in the phonebook or online and even if you walked right in front, you would miss it because of the spelling. They eventually changed its name and I learned a very important lesson.

With an opening date nearing closer and all the website, branding and marketing pending, we really needed to decide on a name. Then one day, Virginia received an email from her mother and I noticed the greeting “Hola Cuca…”. “What does Cuca mean?” I asked. She said it meant nothing, “It’s just the name my mom has called me since I was little and she only uses it when she is happy and I have been good”. “Voila!” I said to her, “that’s what we will call the restaurant: Cuca”. Something that means everything to us just as you mean everything to your mom. Spelt C-U-C-A and pronounced /Kooka/.

The Disneyland of Gastronomy

The world is full of delicious places and their magical traditional food somehow loses a bit of its luster when exported to other countries. Mexican food is a great example, it really tends to suck outside of Mexico. Our understanding of Mexico until recently revolved around burritos the size of a small baby, chilies that will burn your face off, nachos dumped with cheap cheese and, of course, the dangers of tequila. Little did I know that, apart from tequila, none of these are actually Mexican. So, always in search of finding ways to make Cuca’s food tastier, it was time to discover the real Mexico and see for ourselves what many describe as the “Disneyland of gastronomy”.

21 days and 84 meals later, this is what we know. Mexico is separated into 31 states of deliciousness, each one transforming the modest ingredients from their land into spectacular unique local specialties. Natural good things put together in precise amounts with care and attention. Corn, chilies, cheese, beans, lime, tomato, tomatillo, onion and garlic are pretty much in every single dish but the results are, ironically, dramatically different. The food is earthy, hearty, rich and comforting, but it is the sauces that give Mexican food its personality and its complexity lies in roasting, burning and toasting the ingredients to perfume the food with layers of smoky charcoal.

What’s weird is wonderful ingredients like aggressive spiny cactus are transformed through fire into crunchy, slightly sour delicate sticks of green goodness; bugs that would seem disgusting and unthinkable to eat are fried and seasoned with chili and lime leaving Doritos scratching their heads; and chocolate so bitter children would run and hide from, becomes a key ingredient in the enchanting luxurious silky sauce known as Mole. The results are mouthfuls of intensity that dreams are made of.

To sum it up, dishes are cooked with a love that stems from an unmistakable devotion to tradition and a respect for the way things used to be made. The slow way is the good way and food that takes all day is just better. In a world where we have become obsessed with speed and efficiency, industrialization and pre-made preserved crap, Mexico fights a lonely battle to continue to embrace its culture through a celebration of painstaking preparations.

How to use all of this to make Cuca better? - you may wonder. Well… We will perfume our new dishes with the gently smoke of charcoal, we are crafting tortillas from organic brown rice to replicate the delicate ones from corn, we are now drying Bali’s chilis to gain complexity and aroma, we are crafting our own version of mole from local nuts, dried fruits, seeds, chilis and organic chocolate… We are basically dissecting those many mouthfuls that made us smile to make you, our guests, smile in return. Just be patient, we are becoming a little bit Mexican but the final product will take time. Just as we learned in Mexico, good things simply take time.

And here it is! The 5 minutes that capture unbelievably well the most amazing culinary adventure of our lives. We will be forever grateful to our friends from Food and Travel Mexico, who made Mexico unforgettable.

Allergies? We've got you covered.

In the olden days no one had allergies to food and if someone died of peanuts… well, then lesson learned, but today things are different. Celiac, lactose intolerant, vegetarian, pescatarian, diabetic, allergic to garlic… and the list goes on and on. The theory is simple: with highly processed foods, genetically modified meat, the use of antibiotics on animals and the lack of old school farming, our diet has dramatically changed. It is either a religious choice to avoid certain foods or the body’s way of rejecting them that has caused today a massive increase in food allergies.

We clearly see this growing trend in Cuca and the question is now how to handle it. Allergies in restaurants often fall under the category of guests being hard to please and get dealt the card of a simple salad. The question is: should the poor customers, who in most cases are already ashamed to inform their waiter, be punished further for their real inability to eat something? Do these unfortunate people with food restrictions deserve something delicious or are they just considered lucky enough to get anything at all?

The reality is that training an entire service and kitchen team to be knowledgeable about these dietary restrictions is a mammoth task. It is also true that preparing and organizing a kitchen so to eliminate any risk that a customer with an allergy consumes the very ingredients that will harm him/her, is an absolutely nightmare.  But it is also true that we are in hospitality and that the effort made to make people happy is kind of what it’s all about. With this in mind, we have spent the last few months in Cuca not only re-organizing our preparation areas and developing delicious alternatives to all possible allergies, but going as far as to create entire Chef Tasting Menus that rival any other dish we have ever served.

The reception could not have been better and our efforts are greatly paying back. There is nothing like serving an exceptional meal to those often punished with rabbit food. 

The spirit of the volcano

Every week has its challenges and running a restaurant comes with its own unique set. Bali teaches you to “roll with the punches” so to speak and both Kevin and I have learned a lot through the last 5 years about keeping a balance to avoid a nervous breakdown. Things move at an island beat and through experience we have learned that, sometimes, the more you push, the less you get so a good massage or a brilliant sunset reminds you that if it doesn’t all get done today, the world will still turn in the same direction tomorrow. With that in mind last week had us dealing with a new situation that left us once again bewildered. Apparently our beloved and majestic Mount Agung, which stands 3,014m tall and completely dominates the mountainous landscape of the island, is reminding us all that apart from beautiful it is also an actual volcano, now threatening to erupt. Obviously this latest challenge is a little out of the ordinary.

Cuca is 70 km away from the volcano so we are very much safe and sound as an eruption would affect realistically just a 15km radius, but nevertheless it is difficult to ignore and simply carry on with business as usual. The most intriguing part of all that is happening is not following up closely the constant and dramatically inflated updates on the volcanic tremors or the travel warnings that have begun to cripple the island tourism leaving it without travellers. The most fascinating part for us is to witness how the Balinese are dealing with a situation so foreign to us.

Mt Agung is so sacred to the locals that instead of them talking about north, south, east or west, the Balinese set their orientation depending on where you stand in relation to Mt Agung. The direction facing it is called “kaja” (if you live in the south, kaja is northeast) and this is the most sacred and pure point on the compass.

Although the closest villages have been evacuated, many refuse to live their lives behind and still go back to attend their daily tasks; others have sold their livestock at half price. Here in the south Balinese are keeping a close eye on their holiest mountain, showing overwhelming support to those evacuated by bringing funds and provisions to their camps and embarking on a #prayforBali crusade in hopes to soothe the nervous fury of the volcano. And all this while being more grateful than ever to those of you who continue to come to Bali and bring a very much needed sense of normality to the island.

We are in awe at the natural kindness of the Balinese and their deep tights with Mother Nature. We have a lot to learn. So we take it day by day and hope the mighty volcano goes back to sleep so we can too.

Happy Hour

We give up. After 4 years and each of their 1,460 days dodging inquiries about the recipe for our photogenic best-seller cocktail, here it is. You win. But please all we ask is you take your time to make it as delicious as it’s meant to be and choose well your company. Do not share Cuca’s Sun-gria with just anyone.

SUN-GRIA, red wine, iced fruit, brandy soda

A refreshing version of the classic, this cocktail develops as the tropical fruit ice cubes melt and flavor the drink. From a sparkling red wine to a fruity punch.

COMPONENTS: Red wine mix + Iced fruit 

Red wine mix:
½ cup Red wine
1 tbsp  Vanilla brandy (to make it, cut 5 vanilla pods in pieces and put them into a brandy
                bottle. Keep at room temperature for 1 week to infuse)
2/3 cup Soda water
2 tbsp Honey
2 tbsp Lemon juice

Mix brandy with red wine and soda, honey, and lemon juice. Stir gently not to remove bubbles from the soda.

Iced fruit
1 cup Pineapple, juice
1 cup Tangerine, juice
1 cup Watermelon, juice
1 cup Yellow watermelon, juice

Juice fruits individually and strain the juice to remove pulp.
Freeze juice in ice cube trays.
Place the ice cubes in a glass and serve the red wine mix separately allowing your friends to pour it over the ice cubes.

Enjoy, although you may find it simply tastes better in Cuca... :)

Greatest Hits

On August 6, 2012 we launched this blog to voice out our decision of pursuing our dream and opening a restaurant in Bali. That first entry was titled “Dream” and it was followed by many more where we shared the adventures and misfortunes we lived while we started a new life and opened our own business.

As this month we celebrate Cuca’s 4th anniversary, we look back at everything we wrote and cannot help but get emotional. What a journey! And what a blessing to start from a dream and be where we are today, standing amidst a beautiful restaurant, a great team and exceptional guests.

For those of you who have met us only recently and are curious to know more about our journey, I will save you some time and guide you through some of our favorite moments, the highlights of the last 5 years:

A day in our sandals: the title is self-explanatory :)

You are hired!: this is a must read. A crash course in Indonesian culture.

East meets West: when we proudly announced we would only use local products.

Cuca miracle: this is our absolute favorite entry. Read it and you will understand why.

Religion reaches Cuca:  how spiritual Bali takes over our every day.

A day cooking in Cuca: a glimpse into our kitchen from dusk till dawn.

Five things you didn’t know about Cuca: find out some of our best kept secrets.

Happy reading and cheers to 4 years!

Slow Food

You may have heard the name before or you may have seen our snail sign in Cuca’s entrance but in case you don’t know much about this movement, this is what it stands for and how strongly we in Cuca live by its principles.

I guess any Slow Food evangelist starts by unknowingly experiencing that food made with love tastes better, that a meal in the small restaurant of a remote village makes us happy, that taking some time off to have lunch with friends or family on a week day is priceless, that food delivered to our table with a smile and genuine pride is the utmost exciting sight. We do cherish dearly these precious moments of pleasure so we took some time to identify them and decided to make sure we in Cuca provide as many of them as possible.

Slow Food was founded in 1989 in response to fast food and fast living, the loss of our local food traditions and a general diminishing interest in the food we eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices can impact the world around us. Fighting this situation, Slow Food surfaced as a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to the community and the environment. It is a way of living, a way of eating and for us, also a way of running our business.

This philosophy has led us to establish very specific and relevant operating guidelines:

• Who do we hire: we choose local unskilled youngsters and we train them from zero to hospitality professionals to provide them a secured long term income;
• Our conditions of employment: we guarantee health care and fair remuneration for everyone;
• Who do we buy from: local farmers who understand we value quality over quantity and who get paid for the extra time and effort they spend on the products they deliver to us;
• How do we manage our waste: we have invested a small fortune on a complete sewage treatment plant that allows us to treat our waste water till is safe for the environment and to re-use it in our garden to reduce water consumption;
• How do we maintain our premises: we have religiously followed since day one our rule of not cutting any single coconut tree in the garden,  we have learned to up-cycle (have you seen our gorgeous and well-used home made kids playground?), we have built our own herb garden so we can get herbs as fresh as possible, we spend hours every day checking every single detail and a simple flower setup is made with as much delicacy as it were a matter of life or death;
• How do we pack our products: no plastic is used in Cuca, only recyclable and biodegradable materials;
• How do we develop our recipes: we only use local produce, we cook fresh every day, we home-make absolutely everything we serve;
• How do we prepare our food: with lots of time, care and respect;
• How do we serve our dishes: with pride, confidence and excitement!

So that’s how we do it. We take our sweet time to ensure everything we do translates into good, clean and fair (Slow Food’s principles), a pledge for a better future and a happier, tastier today.

Welcome to Indonesia

As a chef the further away you step from actually pulling a carrot from the ground, the more difficult it becomes to use that product with understanding. Being able to somehow connect to those ingredients just seems to make sense if it is your job to cook them.  Most chefs today, however, have no connection with the actual origin of the ingredients for the food they cook: meat, poultry and fish come pre-portioned in plastic bags with no bones and no unsightly remnants of its living, breathing past; fruits and vegetables are picked inedible and ripened along the way losing out on those last weeks of sunshine, rain and fresh air that allow its natural flavor to develop; spices have lost their shape, now ground and packed in beautiful shiny tins and colorful labels with aromatic descriptions, and dairy surely misses its cow.

Traveling throughout Indonesia, a country that is rich in both culture and natural resources, has given us the most intimate connection to every ingredient we use in Cuca and reminded us of so many amazing ones we have foolishly ignored. Products that are so packed with flavor and character that our job is less of being a surgeon trying to bring dying broccoli back to life and more like a tailor simply putting good quality together well.

Drinking coffee in the mountains where people are handpicking ripe cherries and the smell of roasted beans perfumes the air, spotting cashew nuts cling from their maturing fruit that hangs high up in old trees, watching locals stripping bark from young shoots that when dried becomes cinnamon, video-recording golden rice stalks being smashed against wooden ramps to shed them of their grains of rice and attending a traditional ceremony where within an hour a massive buffalo walks in and soon becomes sticks of BBQ satay. This isn’t a summary of the last five years we spent in Indonesia, this happened last week. Welcome to Indonesia, where those products (except for the buffalo for now) have become part of Cuca’s recipes.