Mozaic

We have two more days left here in our Ubud abode and tonight we are going to what our dear friend Che rates as the best restaurant in these parts… its called Mozaic and as with every dining experience we are incredibly excited. I have even started of late to not research menu’s as much as I used too, well not for good places anyway, as I love the surprise of what might come next, how its prepared and served and in what order are what makes a good dinner great and I can sometimes overthink the whole process given all information before hand.

So all I know is that you can choose 6 courses in their dego style and then you can add matched wine with that… so you guessed it we will most likely go for the most food possible with wines please and thank you.

I will continue this tale tomorrow morning once the details of our adventure have actually occurred, I find this the best way to tell a story, other wise it’s fictional bollocks, plain and simple.

So its now 9am the morning after and without putting to much of a fine point on it, its been a long night for my bum, not like jail days more like holy shit what’s happening inside my body days… come to think of they sound rather similar. This I’m sure has nothing to do with our meal last night so we shall leave it there.

We set off with Katut (actually is the name of our driver) to find Mozaic and luckily we didn’t take Laurens advice and walk there as it is rather far up a big hill… we arrived to a beautiful entrance guarded by a very polite security guard who doubled as a valet/host, the entrance was very cool, it was a picture frame that you walk through, very Narnia, very cool and very different.

We where then shown through to the cocktail lounge where we were offered drinks and to browse the 4 dego options they have available for our dining experience, there was a local ingredient based 6 course dego which had versions of beef cheek rendang, mangosteen sorbet, snake fruit and crispy duck, all things we have seen on local menu’s… then there was chef’s tasting menu which blended the local produce with international flavours and it looked amazing with manchego gnocchi, foie gras and aussie lamb making up a bevy of dishes I really wanted to sink my teeth into.

But then there was the chef’s selection dego made up from all of the above and using what’s freshest at the time (even though I hope this would be his ethos with all menu’s) and we wouldn’t get the same dish as each other for each course, this for a pair of food sharers was a dream come true, 6 courses just became 12… Magic.

The fourth choice was a vego dego, which although I’d never order it, I do love to see it. Vego’s are the closest living animal to humans so we should care for them.

The entire menu was chocker’s with local flair, from the cocktails to the desserts the chef had obviously embraced his new found home with vigor. I started the night with a cocktail consisting of Absulut, star fruit, ginger and ginger syrup… so I changed the absulut for grey goose and bam I was very happy, Lauren had a similar drink with absulut, strawberry, lime and something very sour… she was equally as happy as me, especially when a canapé of edam cheese profiterole and truffle came to the table.

As we where lead out the cocktails lounge and through to the restaurant I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of roof the restaurant had, in fact we where out doors and never had we experienced such fine dining in such a relaxed and beautiful beer garden setting, they had put thought into every component of the dining experience and I guess that’s how you get into Asia’s top 50 restaurants. We never saw the same style of plate twice, everything was custom bought for its very own purpose.

We decided to not go with matched wines as we like what we like and prefer to have a few glasses of it rather than a thimble of deliciousness that is never to be seen again. So a 2008 Chilean malbac was just what the doctor ordered, a really great drop and reasonably priced at about 80 Australian dollars.

The first course or amuse bouche as it were, was my favourite, it was a cornetto filled with beef, truffle and parmesan ice cream and Lauren had a similar cornetto with salmon and parmesan…. The cornetto was made form a savoury tuille biscuit of sorts and was eloquent, tasty and well measured cuisine… if only the rest of the courses to follow were as tasty.

Did you sense I slight bit of negativity in my wording? Well if I was to be honest about everything else that followed I’d have to say it didn’t all measure up to my expectations, these where expectations that I had before arrival and then they where magnified once I entered this very slick world. I will add some photo’s for you to all look at, and with out a doubt the execution of his dishes was superb, the ingredients where top notch and the obvious love for the art was ever present… but for me what was lacking in nearly all dishes was the magical 2% of flavour which makes or breaks dishes.

This 2% could be salt, it could be spice it could come from the actual heat of a dish, it’s the thing that makes you salivate, it is unfortunately the thing that makes you move food around your mouth like a creepy person as you want to gain every last drop of the goodness from said dish… and even more unfortunately it was the thing missing from last nights dinner.

This isn’t to say that the crew are Mozaic aren’t talented, quite the opposite I think they are extremely talented and worth a visit as my photo’s show they create some amazing dishes, I am however overly critical when it comes to such quality restaurants as they are selling an experience not just a meal. And when these dining experiences come at such a high price tag, I want to leave with my mind going over time with memories of flavours and textures, I want to regale folks with tales of my favourite dish the one you must have if you ever go there… and a cornetto of beef with parmesan sorbet is not worth such a long journey.

The entire bill was the equivalent of about $500 and when ever this amount of money is handed over for a meal, shit best be top notch, make sure your team is on it’s A game, and make sure every member of your team knows why they are adding ingredients, its not good enough following a recipe and executing the dish to perfection… if you don’t know the reasons for the steps, procedures and the need for certain ingredients then it will never be memorable.

I would go into more details about the dishes but I kid you not, I can’t remember most of them and with the breakdown of communication between us and the floor staff, it was hard to work out what was what… molecular gastronomy (MG) are words that get chucked around a lot and I for the most part love it when and only when it is used for a reason and used with restraint, they did seem to want to have some component of MG in all dishes and it was un-necessary. The large gel filled caviar they made was left for too long in their chemical bath and the skin was way to thick and as with shit loads of places they over used crumbs, soils and powders.

Lauren and I still had a magnificent evening as we never look for fault at the time and left really happy, I went and had a chat to the chef and complimented him on how he called a pass with an international crew, we tipped the wait staff as they where so attentive and friendly the entire evening and we went home reveling in each other company, so please don’t think me a hater, I’m just calling it how I saw it.