Our picks: Madrid

As we mentioned a few months ago, we are always sharing our favorite restaurants from every city we know with the hundreds of customers we meet in Cuca every week in search of the tastiest food around the world. People seem to trust chefs’ favorites when choosing food and since everyone asks our humble opinion, we have decided to start a proper “Our Picks” section where we give you our recommendations on where and what to eat.

We covered Bali already and today’s blog entry is about Madrid, the capital of Spain and by far the capital of deliciousness within the country. You will find great restaurants everywhere in Spain, but Madrid has a huge concentration of brilliant places to eat and a unique opportunity to experience traditional food from all over the country. For its variety and consistently delicious food, there is nowhere else like Madrid!

San Gines
A must for breakfast, this place serves the best hot chocolate and churros in the world since 1894. Just across from the main entrance and the big queue of people waiting, there is a second store. Same product, same taste without the wait.
Price: *
What to order: of course Hot Chocolate and Churros. Do try the Porra: it is bigger and thicker than a churro with a slight yeasty taste, our favorite.

La Mallorquina
This place serves basically cakes, pastry and coffee. The main difference is many of the items they serve they have created and the rest of Spain now calls them "a tradition". Hustle in through the small doors into the cramped space filled with sugar-crazed zombies. Watch how others order and follow the organized chaos to sweet deliciousness.
Price: *
What to order: the one and only Napolitana de Chocolate.

Mallorca
Brilliant breakfast venue or if you are just looking for a snack between meals. Service is brilliantly professional and the whole experience is superb. It is truly a high-class coffee shop that serves well-crafted food.
Price: *
What to order: Tortel. Visually a badly made bagel and really nothing special but ironically one of the best pastries we have ever eaten. Don’t judge a book by its cover here. The Tortel is a wonderful fine soft almond paste wrapped in flaky soft bread pastry.

Las tortillas de Gabino
The Spanish tortilla in Spain is a big deal. Everyone has their favorite and the dish has become its own religion with people all worshipping a different standard. Some like it runny, some overcooked, some more potato, some less. We have tried them all but the ones served here are different, delicious and worth worshipping.
Price:***
What to order: The classic Valazqueña. The portions are big so don’t get excited.

La Tasquería
Listen, we don’t love eating liver, kidney, hearts and weird bits but…there are exceptions. This place crafts absolutely delicious luxurious dishes from the less glamorous parts. Unexpected, unrivaled. It hooked a Michelin star for how well things are done.
Price:***
What to order: Try the #heart #duck # raspberry dish. Best version of duck you will ever try.

La Barraca
This place specializes in rice dishes like Paella. They are absolutely brilliant at it and have been serving perfect rice for more than 80 years. Nothing modern or trendy here and that’s what we love about it.
Price:****
What to order: Queen shellfish Paella. Get them to put it right on the table and not serve it up for you in the back. The experience of eating right out of the hot pan is magic.

Punto MX
Holding one Michelin star. this place serves small bites of deep, earthy, smoky, unctuous modern Mexican food. Taste takes center stage and the time usually wasted on fancy decoration is spent on proper cooking.
Price:****
What to order: go for the Long Tasting menu.

La Bien Aparecida
Traditional grandma style comfort food with brilliant seasonal products, this restaurant showcases some of Spain's classic dishes done very very well. Slick simple modern dining room provides the space to enjoy the best of what’s in season.
Price:*****
What to order: our favorites are the Flores de alcachofas con migas de rabo de toro (artichokes with oxtail), the egg croquettes (their specialty and a must to try!) and their steak tartar with mustard ice cream.

Pazo a Coruña
This is a Galician restaurant and Galicia is world famous for seafood and that’s what this place does very well. A grown-up establishment that serves extraordinary fresh seafood cooked perfectly. What you order is what you get, no surprises, no messing about. Old school proper cooking that everyone would love. 
Price:****
What to order: A star of the menu is the Merluza a la Gallega. Order some appetizers like clams, mussels or grilled squid to start and then the merluza for main. Order only one portion to share between two unless you’re a Viking!

La huerta de Tudela
Where age-old tradition and timeless cooking is devoured in clean and modern comfort. Out of dozens and dozens of proper meals eaten in Madrid this was the most delicious, period. What else can be said.
Price:****
What to order: with their own vegetable garden, ironically the star of the menu are the veggie dishes. The Potato Duquesa may be the best dish we have ever eaten. Seriously!

La Tasquita de Enfrente
Spain’s timeless classics are here honored and lifted using the absolute best seasonal products. The food is very simple but reflects purely on the quality of each ingredient. Service is incredible and the entire experience with only a few tables for the restaurant is like dining in the chefs home.
Price:****
What to order: take the tasting menu and be careful with ordering the “specials” that are not listed, the price may surprise you…

Castelados

A cold renovated sterile white dining room and bar may not look like the best place to eat well but in this case, they are. Michelin has awarded them a Bib Gourmand distinction for delicious food and their rustic perfectly cooked seafood is some of the best. 

Price:****

What to order: Milhojas de Ventresca is a must and try the prawns from Huelva. Unbelievably good!

A story to be told

A late-night dinner between chefs never ends well and as proof, this is what we got ourselves into last time I met my chef friend the great Will Meyrick.

High from feasting on his delicious curries and over excited to have found someone equally mad about food, we somehow agreed and committed to something damn near impossible. We would travel to a place we had never been before, eat through the streets, coffee shops and simple restaurants to discover as much traditional food as possible. We would meet the people who cook the food and understand their story and the dishes they serve. All this information would be taken back to our kitchens and together like best friends we would craft new dishes completely inspired by those we ate and by the methods used to prepare them. The idea at the time sounded genius: to tell the story of our journey through food. But, having never worked together before and coming from completely different culinary backgrounds, telling a story in two different languages was going to need some translation.

So, with fingers crossed and the location selected, we were off to one of Indonesia’s thousand islands: Southern Kalimantan.

To really learn you must be seen as a curious student, not an arrogant teacher, a big challenge with a TV crew and their daunting cameras following every step we took. To sum up the 6 day trip, we devoured everything we came across: smoky char-grilled wild duck, boiling rich herbal chicken soup, crunchy fried river fish dusted in roasted rice dust, Arabic-influenced slow cooking, fermented exotic fruit jams, rustic fish and rice cooked on the jungle floor in young bamboo over open fire and so much more. Indeed we ate Kalimantan and discovered powerful full-flavored hearty comfort food squeezed directly from bustling local markets and cooked by proud locals. A week full of those magical moments when someone gives you their food and curiously watches for a reaction as you try something for the very first time. All that was left was to now try and figure out how to put that into a dinner that gives every guest that experience not just as it was, but the way we would like to translate it.

With a 12 course menu of new dishes modeled from those old traditional molds, ceramics hand-crafted precisely for each dish, a dining room set like a jungle with the echoing sound of the forest, weeks of cooking, tuning and testing, the stage is set and our story of Southern Kalimantan ready to be told.

Tickets still available for May 11, 7pm at Som Chai restaurant in Seminyak. Book yours here. 

Our picks: Bali

Personally meeting hundreds of customers every week, all of them in search of the tastiest food around the world, over the years we have shared countless times our favorite restaurants from every city we know. People seem to trust chefs’ favorites when choosing food and since everyone asks our humble opinion, we have decided to start a proper Our Picks section where we give you our recommendations on where and what to eat.  But just because we may help you find a new favorite don’t forget about your first love, Cuca!

Bali

The Bali food scene has changed a lot over the last 10 years with numerous great restaurants popping up using the bounty of amazing local produce. As crazy as it sounds, traditional delicious Balinese food is still very difficult to find in Bali. So, with that said, these are Cuca’s picks for the Island.

Jimbaran

Karya Rebo
This place serves the best version of Bali’s most iconic dish of fire roasted suckling pig. Brilliant!
Price: *
What to order: Suckling pig (babi guling)

Sundara
This place has the best sunset lounge. Great prices on cocktails between 5-7pm Happy Hour. Cocktails are designed by one of the world’s best bartenders Javier Delas Muelas. It is at the Four Seasons Hotel so it is delux.
Price: *****
What to order: Cocktails

Lia Cafe
This place serves Jimbaran’s best seafood BBQ. Siting with your feet in the sand and eating open fire freshly grilled seafood on the beach.
Price: ***
What to order: 2 large prawns per person, a fresh red snapper and fried squid. Very good.

Nusa Dua

Bumbu Bali
This place is Cuca’s favorite in the island for authentic delicious Balinese food in a classic setting. Great value, hearty, super tasty.
Price: ***
What to order: Sate Lilit

Seminyak

Sansaka
This place serves clever and tasty Indonesian fusion cooking. This is their sister restaurant to Merah Putih and is much smaller and more intimate. Say hello to chef Kieran and tell him Cuca sent you.
Price: ***
What to order: try some small plates like Opor Bebek

Wacko Burger
This place serves perfect flame grilled burgers. Combinations range from the classics to the creative. It may seem crazy that we recommend a burger place while in Bali but it is a great burger and makes for a proper lunch.
Price:**
What to order: Must add the fried chili to any burger for a wicked spicy crunch

Bambu
This place serves great classic Indonesian fare. Very tasty and well presented the restaurant is a beautiful romantic venue in the heart of busy Seminyak. Best for dinner.
Price: ****
What to order: Keep an eye open for the daily specials, they sell out fast.

Ubud

Pulau Kelapa
This place serves great classic Indonesian food. Everything is made fresh to order and is authentic and very cheap. The venue is a hundred-year-old traditional Javanese house that in the evening feels like you have stepped back in time.
Price: **
What to order: Beef ribs

Sari Organik
Bali’s original organic café. Food comes straight from their garden and the 20-minute walk through organic rice fields until you reach the open air bamboo hut is magic.
Price: *
What to order: Try the unusual healthy drinks

Room 4 Dessert
Appearing on Netflix Chef Table series the rock star Chef Will Goldfarb blows people away with very clever ultra-unique desserts in his desert only restaurant. The venue is a shabby tin very understated building with a bustling sweet crowd. Say hello to Will and tell him Cuca sent you.
Price: ****
What to order: Dessert tasting menu

Night Rooster
This place serves some of Bali’s best cocktails based on local ingredients. The venue is a classic cocktail bar with a sophisticated vibe.
Price: ****
What to order: Your chance to try something new

Bedugul

Hot Chocolate House
Delicious Balinese hot chocolate is just what you need in the cool weather of the highlands. Don't miss the flower garden towards the lake.
Price: *
What to order: the classic hot chocolate, the pastel ayam and the popcorn chicken are our favorites.

Where to eat

The joy of traveling is discovering those magical places where we feel we are truly experiencing where we are or where we get to live a moment that we know we will remember forever. We know we are tourists but we don’t want to fall into uninspired tourist traps. We instead hope to get to places that are worth our precious few holiday moments.

The challenge is to find those little gems in a world where the amount of information is overwhelming, where a quick research on google takes you to dark corners of knowledge totally unrelated to your original quest. It is funny how with all of today’s technology we still end up depending on friends' recommendations or old fashion guide books that never seem to let us down.

That is why we are so proud and excited to be featured in well-respected guides that are as trusted as good friends pointing you to the goodness that awaits in those holiday destinations. And the most amazing thing is that we only find out Cuca has made it when we see you walking confidently through the door holding that little bible, wherever you are coming from,
and proudly proclaiming “I was told I need to eat here” and then it’s up to us to prove how right your little friend was.

A new Cuca

After more than five years of feeding those traveling through Bali, a lot in Cuca has changed. Every single day we understand more and more what our customers are looking for and we are constantly finding new ways to get better. Little things make a big difference and caring about everything goes a long way!

The food since we opened has changed dramatically (for the best, we want to think!) and with a bigger team, more work can go into every dish and every drink. Our service has gone from simply getting you what you ordered with a smile, to providing a real personal experience where we know what you want before you have to ask. But our dining room and garden lounge are still exactly the same and just like everything else and all of us, they must get better. So, after months of contemplating how to keep all of what people love about Cuca but stay one step ahead of an ever-changing culinary scene, we have started to add some spectacular new touches.

Rather than giving everything away and ruining the movie, let’s just say that a new private room for 40 people is already completed for smaller groups to celebrate in style, a new reception now welcomes and farewells you with lots of handcrafted souvenirs to take with you, our entire garden lounge will soon become a destination with more people choosing to dine and chill outside...

There will be heaps of changes so stay tuned and we look forward to welcoming you with the same smiling faces to a new and very improved Cuca!!! 

Cuca's brand new private dining room

Our version of Christmas

It’s hard to believe, but yes indeed, it’s that time of the year again. With Christmas just around the corner, Bali is getting ready to explode with people flooding-in to enjoy the untraditional sunny version of the festive season. Sunshine and sand will replace, for many, a cold wet winter, and it is Cuca’s job to then replace the infamous turkey. For those who claim it just isn’t Christmas without the dry overcooked bird, lovingly burnt sweet potatoes, canned cranberry glue, mom’s latest version of how to make Brussels sprouts not suck and a vomiting uncle, well… we beg to differ.

Each year we try to create our version of what Christmas is and each year we learn something new from what “went wrong” the year before. With that said, get ready boys and girls for our latest greatest edition of Cuca’s Christmas, which promises to be the best version yet.

Looking back at all we have done well and all we haven’t, there is one lesson we will never forget. Let me explain our very first Christmas, which to be honest, was a total delicious disaster:

Without snow, it was easy to overcompensate. We didn’t go as far as to dress our team as elves, but we did and always do have Santa who, by the way, was not the problem. The problem was our decorations were not kid-friendly but very kid-accessible and ended up very kid-broken; our festive Christmas music quickly became nauseating; our ornamental fireplace made from red bricks and filled with logs became a death trap for those who decided to sit on top for selfies, with people until today still bearing the scars. Our red fuzzy hats had our team sweating, overheating and damn near passing out during dinner service. Our special drink was not well articulated with its alcoholic content and rapidly had unassuming guests drunk and far too celebratory. Even our Christmas menu, which took months and was our version of the classics, was unwelcomed as no one wanted it. People came to eat the food of Cuca, the dishes their friends recommended, the items they waited all year to have again, and rather than happy, jolly, cheerful guests, we had angry, annoyed, and aggressive ones.

So, if we don’t do easily accessible glass balls, repetitive annoying music, a widow-making fireplace, insulating sauna hats, easily accessible booze or a set menu, what do we do? Come and see for yourself from Dec 20^th until Jan 2^nd. A Christmas you will not forget. 

I love, you hate

First of all, let’s start off with saying I love food. Traveling anywhere in the world and eating everything traditional is my way of discovering cultural heritage and my biggest source of inspiration. But not everyone is willing to try anything, and most people can be pretty set in their ways with food. Everyone is different when it comes to taste and the farther you travel, the more different the food can get. What is weird and unthinkable to some, is delicious classic comfort food for others, and these individual preferences are hard to let go, being engrained since birth by every single meal.

To generalize an entire planet of people based on each country’s preferences would be unfair but, more often than not, tends to be in many ways true. Not every country grows up eating a diverse selection of ethnic foods like Australians and Canadians, who naturally have a more open-minded approach to flavor developed from being a migrant country and total lack of almost any traditional food of their own. European countries like France, Italy and Spain, with a strong proud culinary heritage, are easily crippled and physically pained with spicy foods, whereas the people of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia barely notice the heat. Most of Indonesia, for example, hates foods that are sour and the use of vinegars and citrus is minimal, while in the Philippines the opposite is true, where pure white vinegar is literally used as a dipping sauce and adored. Western countries consume large amounts of dairy items like milk, yoghurt and cheese, yet China looks at dairy as the enemy and cheese with absolute disgust. Asians, in general, find western food boring and tasteless, heavy on salt and often too creamy and rich, while westerners often find South East Asian food too sweet and overwhelmed by spices, losing the true flavor of ingredients. In Western food, chicken tastes like chicken and a lot of effort is put into making that happen like with a good roast chicken, while in Indonesia you would never even know it is chicken as the use of numerous vegetables and spices smashes the food with flavors. 

So, with that being said, what do you cook when you are trying to feed people from all over the world their best meal yet? This is the unique challenge we face in Cuca. Yesterday, for example, we had people from Belgium, Denmark, Mexico, Japan, South Africa, Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom and Korea. So, how do we do it? What is good for everyone? How to make everyone happy when a dish can’t be too spicy, too salty, too sour, too sweet, too common, too unusual, too much of anything while still being totally packed with flavor yet remaining balanced and delicious? That, my friend, is the secret of Cuca.

Our secret to delicious food

Southeast Asian food is unquestionably exciting! From the spices and depth of Indonesia to the sour vibrant character of the Philippines; from the clean crunchy freshness of Vietnam to the diverse hearty comfort of Malaysia and the spicy aromatic perfume of Thailand. If you have ever had an authentic meal at a great Thai restaurant, you know it is more thrilling and potentially dangerous than white water rafting. Its unexpected sourness, the confusion of sweetness, the earthiness of grilled meats and toasted nuts, the shock of slow-burning fiery hot chilis and the memories brought by fragrant fresh herbs. Yup, coming from Canada, the mystery of Southeast Asian cooking and a genuine curiosity for its food has been a source of inspiration for years.

Western-style cooking traditionally focuses on individual ingredients with complimentary sauces and garnishes used only to support the main items. Every ingredient is still very much appreciated and obvious in the end result. In Southeast Asian cooking, however, it is totally different: ingredients are blended, mixed, braised or smashed together giving the dish an entirely new flavor where each ingredient acts like musical notes to form a song. Think grilled chicken with lemon potatoes and parsley vs. chicken curry. Western food is delicate while Southeast Asian food smashes your face with flavor. As a classically trained chef, the use of sugar in savory food is unheard of in European cooking, while very common in Asia. The use of sugar opens the door for the juice of fresh lime for balance, fish sauce and soy sauce replace salt bringing with it salty fermentation and umami. This new “sweet, salty sourness” pushes flavors forward and makes dishes zing. These are the secrets of complex flavors and the difference between bold and boring.

Of course we had to incorporate these reflections in Cuca. Instead of taking traditional western dishes and merely substitute ingredients, we needed to do more. We could also not simply combine all ingredients together like in Southeast Asia, as dishes would lose their identity. What we did then was to create components of flavor and assemble those components into a dish. Let me explain: rather than a curry where everything is cooked together and every delicious mouthful is the same, we break down the components and serve these elements of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, spicy and aromatic individually so no two mouthfuls are identical, causing the guest to eagerly continue to attack a plate of food searching for discovery. Our food, by design, takes the western approach to showcasing unique ingredients while still delivering a powerful punch of flavor. Nothing soft, subtle or delicate about what we do.

Buckle up and hold on to enjoy a new brand of taste we call Cuca!

The triathlon of cooking

The quit rate of a career in cooking is high. It has a unique combination of hard physical work, overwhelming pressure and mental focus that causes many to give it up just as fast as an episode of Masterchef begins. Cooking is in many ways like a triathlon: to win you must be good at all three events. You can’t be great in the swim, suck on the bike and crush the run if you expect a good result. I break cooking down to three similarly grueling events:

First event: Preparation
Highly repetitive tasks that rather than just get done must be done perfectly and as fast as possible. Speed and perfection never go hand in hand but they must. Any error in this critical stage and everything else after will never be as good as it should. Many people drown in the preparation and struggle to complete the mountains of blanching, chopping, roasting, braising, portioning and the many small details that should set them up for Service success. The time quickly slips away and too long spent on anything will have you rushing frantically with everything. Great cooks know the importance of preparation and develop systems to ensure success.

Second event: Service
This is normally where you see people leave for the toilet and never return.
Service is the grim reaper of events and will break the toughest of inmates. No two days are alike and no two moments the same. The speed of orders being called requires split-second reactions to remove items from your chiller and begin any number of challenging cooking tasks from delicately steaming, aggressively BBQ’ing, pan searing until 24-carat golden brown or just warming a few seconds in the salamander. The difference between hero and villain is small, a minute too long and the garbage, not the plate, becomes the outcome.

Third event: Functions
Functions lack the action-packed chaos of Service and rely more on meticulous structure and organization. Every detail must be planned to the second and each dish served to a guest must be broken down into little bitty steps. These are then assigned to each staff, who will assemble a plate like a child builds Lego. Each cook will place one single item on the plate and slide it to the next cook. By the time the plate reaches the end, it will have received 8-10 components resulting in the finished dish. Sounds easy but when you are serving a hundred plates, all the food must be piping hot and each item is being cooked freshly by a team just out of sight, it becomes a ballet. No panic, no screaming, but a delicate intricate dance of cooking and assemble. The challenge is any single mistake causes a traffic jam of dishes that result in waiting, hungry, “I want a discount” customers.

So, if you’re thinking that the chef looks a little stressed when he should be picking flowers and smiling like on a children’s show, you may want to remember that the determination to finish the race and have you eating the very best is not as easy as you think. If the team cooking looks to be having fun and genuinely enjoying the ride, it is because they have made it to the finish line of the triathlon. But keep an eye out for the new ones, they are easy to spot, they are still on the swim and sucking in water fast!

_By Chef-Athlete Kevin Cherkas

Five years ago this week...

... we had just finished construction, unpacked customized tables and chairs still smelling of freshly cut polished wood, opened boxes of beautiful handmade ceramics, washed new uniforms just in time to wrap around our team, worked for days to make the kitchen sparkle and complete the mountains of food preparation… And after months of panic, dread and fear, we finally opened our doors to guests and began serving our first meals.

Our anniversary celebration every year is a bit like remembering a battle that you won victoriously but where many were wounded and lost on that fateful day. Some survived and lead the way while others wilted under the pressure of battle and struggled to continue the fight. We look back at that moment and thank God we lacked the full understanding of what we were about to do by opening a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, down a road with no lights, in the sleepy quiet fishing village of Jimbaran, Bali.

With new restaurants popping up every single day and their level of food always on the rise, we are now more determined than ever to make Cuca the very best. It’s what our guests expect and what we strive to deliver.

We celebrate this 5th anniversary as a team who have gone through it all together and who will continue doing so for as long as you continue choosing us.

Cheers to 5 years!

Cuca Team