Sardine - Tropical Living

Pictures by Christopher Leggett

Unusually for us at Tropical Living, we are endorsing an establishment owned by people we don’t know or owe personal favours to, or need to apologize to for embarrassing indiscretions we committed whilst drunk there last Friday night. We haven’t even been offered free dinners! This is highly irregular, and may get us expelled from the Bali Lifestyle Magazine Association. What is going on here?

Sardine is the latest Seminyak hot spot, located on the upper end of Petitenget. It is the brainchild of Pascal Chevillot, a 4^th generation chef from the Burgundy region of France, and his Slovenian artist wife Pika.They lived on the uber-chic island of St. Martin for ten years, where Pascal had a restaurant called Cha-cha-cha. One of those names that probably seemed like a good idea at the time, don’t you think? Anyhoo, they then moved to LA, where Pascal was working as a private chef to rich people, and Pika was painting and doing interior design. And now they’re here in Bali.Their chef, Frederic Pougault, was previously at Gado Gado, and the food is mainly local sea food. They get their veggies from their own little organic farmstead in Munduk Lumbung. The menu changes daily, depending on what Frederic can get his hands on at Jimbaran fish market that morning. And that is the nicest thing about eating at Sardine; you don’t know what will be offered until you get there, but you do know that whatever it is, it will be the best and freshest available. There were some meat dishes on the menu the day that we were there, but you feel that they are there more out of duty. My wife had the crab bisque, which was excellent, followed by grilled sardines, also very good. I had the baby chicken, which was not very interesting, frankly, and the mango tatin, which was fabulous. We both had the fresh asparagus as a side dish, which were also extremely good. The wines are surprisingly cheap, too. Fifty bucks a head should see you through if you don’t go silly with the wine list.

But good food is good food, and there are lots of places serving good nosh in Bali these days. My main reason for plugging Sardine is not the food, but the building. Look at it. Stunning, isn’t it? And not a single tree felled to create it, either; it’s all in bamboo. And they have a huge rice field surrounding the restaurant, which they cleverly bought to protect their views for eternity. So go and enjoy the freshest sea food in Bali, and marvel at the beautiful bamboo building, and gaze happily at the beautifully lit rice fields. It’s a lovely restaurant, and it will become a fixture on the Bali restaurant scene for years to come, trust me.

SARDINE RESTAURANT
Jl. Petitenget, Seminyak.
Tel. : 0361 738202