Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of my series, The Best Restaurant in the World, in which I go to every restaurant in the world*, review them, rate them, and tell you which is the very best!
*This may be a slight exaggeration.
In our last episode, the humble Bee Hoon Stall in Penang, Malaysia swiped the top spot despite its lack of atmosphere! If you want to see how it pulled it off, you can read that episode here: https://steemit.com/life/@page-traveler/the-best-restaurant-in-the-world-bee-hoon-stall-in-penang-malaysia
Today's contender is a little different. In a slight blast from the past, I'm going to be reviewing the (locally) famous Warung Amphibia in Sanur, Bali. Warung Amphibia is a casual, beachfront place, the kind where you'll be dipping your toes in the sand while you eat.
The special feature of Warung Amphibia is that you choose your seafood from a display, and then that very beast is grilled up and brought to you. The price is based on the weight of whatever you chose. (Incidentally, some places have a really bad reputation for comically inaccurate scales. However, Warung Amphibia isn't one of them.)
I selected a very beautiful crab (Seriously. Another tourist came by and started taking pictures of my lunch before they took it off to cook it.) and my husband chose a mighty octopus tentacle. They were weighed, we paid, and then we went over to a table on the sand to await our feast. Ordering drinks is honestly pretty confusing. You go to a separate thing in the same shack, and it appears to be a separate business. We both ordered fresh young coconuts, and we should have bargained in advance, because we were charged well over market price. Oh well – young coconut is always good.
There was a very long wait for our food, but finally, it arrived.
One of the great things about Warung Amphibia is that they coat all the seafood in a garlic/spice/? seasoning that is absolutely delicious. I was seriously trying to capture every bit of it off of my crab shell. A downside – I got absolutely nothing to open my crab up with, and its shell was seriously tough. Luckily, my fingers are tough, too.
The vegetable side dish was good, a little on the plain side. As you can see, I got two kinds of sambel (sauce). I love sambel matah, but I'm not a big fan of the tomato based one. The quality of my crab was fantastic, totally fresh and sweet. If only it didn't take me forever to get the meat out...I also ended up a little hungry, because so much of my meal was inedible shell.
In the end, there were pluses and minuses...let's see how it does!
To sum up:
Atmosphere: 3/5
Food: 4/5
To go or not to go: Go, but only order the shellfish if you're willing to take a long time and order some extra weight.
Price: $$
Global rank at time of review: #3
The Best Restaurant in the World
- Bee Hoon Stall at Good Corner in Penang, Malaysia
- Kirishima Japanese Restaurant in Penang, Malaysia
- Warung Amphibia in Sanur, Bali
- 1885 in Penang Malaysia
Warung Amphibia is a nice place with an absolutely spectacular marinade, but the difficulty of ordering well, not to mention eating what you ordered, cost it in the rankings. Tune in next time for another challenger!