Cuca Flavor, Jimbaran Bali – A Truly Amazing Dining Experience!

First of all, I would say…… living in Bali is like opening thousand of opportunities you’ve never even imagined before. It’s like… I would love to live here for the rest of my life! I mean it.

We had a pleasure to check out what Cuca Flavor is all about yesterday. Cuca is actually a newly opened restaurant in Jimbaran Bali that will be celebrating their grand opening in 10th August 2013. Congrats, guys!

So anyway, we went to Cuca’s soft opening last night and had a chance to meet the two lovely owners, Kevin and Virginia during our visit.

As a restaurant which adopt a casual sharing dining experience, Cuca offer a great variety of Tapas, Cocktails, and Desserts. Dessert was amazing, I swear. We’ll check on that later.

So basically, there are 3 dining areas here : Food Bar (which is just right next to the kitchen), Dining Room, and Garden Lounge + Cocktail Bar (outdoor).

The Garden Lounge

As we arrived, we did check out the garden lounge and had our nice drink while sitting outside. The weather was so great that day and we found that Cuca’s garden lounge is just perfect for chilling out on windy afternoon. There are coconut trees and I-don’t-know-what-kind-of-trees tree which make the atmosphere even more perfect.

Fred had a glass of Red Artizan Chiraz which is actually a glass of wine that tasted like a combination of blackberry, cherry and chocolate.

While I had Pink Lime Mocktail, which is a pile of frozen lime with an addition of soda meringue. You can also have Pink Lime Cocktail and they will add up gin to your drink if you prefer it that way. I love my Pink Lime Mocktail! It tasted surprisingly sour with that kind of frozen texture, and it really kicks me.

Later I found out that Pink Lime is women’s favorite here in Cuca Flavor, while men’s favorite was Moon-Gria and Sun-Gria. We’ll talk about this ‘Gria’-thing later 😉

The Food Bar

After spending like… half an hour sitting outside enjoying the breeze, we moved in to the Food Bar – the one beside the kitchen so that we could see clearly how Kevin prepared our foods. He even explained everything about the foods in detail and I’m sooo happy that we chose the Food Bar instead the Dining Room. The dining experience was totally different and exciting! And it’s like being in a culinary tv show.

Cuca offers great Tapas!

I didn’t know about this Tapas thing earlier, but later I found out that Tapas is actually a kind of appetizers or snacks, in Spanish Cuisine. No, not a kind, but a lot of kind. What’s even more exciting is… Kevin (the chef) did find out the recipes for each Tapa that Cuca offers himself! He is amazing.

So, anyway, since Tapas is made to be shared with others, we did have plenty plates of Tapas. Ideally, one need around 3 plates to get one’s stomach full.

Before we enjoy the amazing Tapas, Kevin gave us this Cotton Betutu. Do you know Ayam Betutu (Betutu Chicken)? If you’ve been to Bali, you must be very familiar with it. Ayam Betutu is a famous traditional Balinese meal here, aside from the Babi Guling, and it’s highly seasoned and spiced with, well, I don’t know what ingredients they use. But the thing is, Kevin take out the exact same ingredients needed for seasoning Ayam Betutu and made a cotton candy from that ingredients. I was like… “Is that even possible? He must be out of his mind.” But hey, it tasted really good! And the Cotton Betutu melts so quickly in your mouth. It was such a good start.

The next thing we had was Watermelon Salad.

There are actually 3 kinds of salad Cuca offers here, which are Watermelon salad, Young Carrot salad, and Pumpkin salad. We decided to go for the freshest among all. Yup, watermelon! The salad tasted so good! It was combined along with some sliced of pink radish and fresh cilantro and a sprinkle of sesame. We love it.

And here comes the next thing. Warm Spiced Edamame.

If you’ve been to a Japanese restaurant, you must be familiar with this. But as a fact, Cuca does modify the original edamame a lil bit. It was seasoned with bali sea salt, some szechuan pepper, and dry chilli flakes. As a result, we did finish our warm edamame until the last piece of it.

Next’s coming was my favorite. Crispy Chicken Tapa!

It may look strange and unusual, but it tasted incredibly good! Crispy Chicken Tapa is a combination of KFC-inspired fried chicken with an additional of wild honey, country coleslaw, sesame dust, and lemon basil. It’s kinda hard to describe what it tasted like. The chicken itself is highly well seasoned! It has this salty and spicy flavor, and it is actually boneless. So it tasted a lil bit like karage, but with a lot more seasoning. Crispy Chicken Tapa is everyone’s favorite in Cuca Flavor.

Then we had the Prawn Puddles.

The puddles itself is a kind of broth with rice and some garnish, so it tasted a little bit like congee, but it’s slightly different. Cuca’s Prawn Puddles itself consists of big prawns, white rice, some wild herbs and red chilli. It tasted slightly bitter and salty.

The next thing will be…. Succulent Pork Chica. I know.. I know.. all of these foods got a strange name, don’t they? Just go with it, will you? 😉

We did found that this pork chica tasted like hmm, let’s say, burger. Virginia told us that this meal was inspired by Spanish’s chorizo, if I’m not mistaken. It’s kinda hard remembering this spanish food name, you know.

So, the pork was previously chopped and dried and seasoned. And then it is shaped and roasted over the fire. This Pork Chica was served along with slice apple, bali cashew, cauliflower and peppermint. The meat itself is so juicy, and tasty. Ah, I love everything they have here.

Anyway, I mentioned earlier about men’s favorite drink here. They are both Sun-Gria and Moon-Gria. It was actually a glass of wine with some piles of iced fruit (they use real fresh fruits!) and brandy soda. Sun-Gria uses red wine while Moon-Gria uses white wine. We decided to go for the white wine instead, so here’s our Moon-Gria.

It seems that somebody loves his Moon-Gria very much!

And here comes the best part. Dessert time! We had a plenty kind of dessert to choose, from dark chocolate to sour pineapple. But we found this ‘BBQ Berry’ quite interesting, don’t you think? I mean, seriously, barbeque?

So here’s the mighty dessert. BBQ Berry.

BBQ Berry was a big plate of grilled strawberry, yes, grilled. With a scope of almond ice cream, and strawberry yogurt, and pandan custard. Such a perfect combination for a dessert. We LOVE it.

The even more exciting thing is…. we had a chance to step in their kitchen and take photos! I was too happy about this kitchen stuff. You know, running a restaurant or a cafe has been my biggest dream ever since.

Thank you so much Kevin and Virginia and all Cuca’s family member! We did have an amazing dinner last night. Food was really good and the dining experience itself is indeed unique! We had so much fun.

Keep it up and good luck for Cuca Flavor! Gracias!

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Location
Jalan Yoga Perkanthi
Jimbaran, Bali

Facebook  : Cuca Flavor
Twitter     :  @cucaflavor
Website    : www.cucaflavor.com

 

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