At Kaum Bali, Appreciating Rare Ingredients in Indonesian Cuisine
Jakarta. Following the establishment of its Michelin-worthy restaurant in Hong Kong earlier this year, the Potato Head group recently opened Kaum, a second outpost for Indonesian cuisine in Seminyak, Bali.
Located at the second floor of the Potato Head Beach Club, a beachfront property that is always crowded with sun-worshippers from across the world, Kaum offers both crystal clear views over the Indian ocean and rich plates of authentic Indonesian cuisine. The restaurant boasts silvery-grey, concrete wall panels, all hand-carved by artisans in Toraja, South Sulawesi, for a casual dining setting.
With menus varying from the good old gado-gado and nasi goreng to the casually unknown variety such as gohu ikan tuna (marinated tuna) and mangut ikan asap (smoked fish fillet), Kaum gives visitors a closer look at Indonesian dishes made from indigenous, rare and almost-forgotten ingredients.
The people behind Kaum's busy kitchen are brand director Lisa Virgiano and executive chef Antoine Audran, who spent the past four years meeting farmers across the archipelago and helping them nurture their products to meet the restaurant's standards.
Lisa, a food enthusiast with a deep passion for local values and cooking techniques behind authentic cuisines, said the challenges for today's farmers remain complicated as they struggle to make profit, let alone understand the industry's needs.
During a recent media visit to the Jatiluwih rice field in Tabanan, Bali, where Kaum sources its rice, Lisa said the biggest challenge is to ensure that local farmers keep their land.
"The biggest challenge in agriculture is to ensure producers do not give up to the tourism wave and sell their land," she said. "Rice fields in Bali are slowly disappearing. More land is sold to property agents because landowners will earn much bigger profits than from farming,"
She said this is the reason that sourcing is a nonstop process.
Lisa, who holds a master's degree in communication for development from Sweden's Malmö University, aims to establish connectivity between farmers and the chefs at Kaum.
"The producer's world is a completely different world than ours, so we must not stop visiting and telling them about our world. I tell them stories about the restaurant and we even give them our recipes to try," she said. "It is important for them to understand the kind of ingredients we need to create certain meals."
Kaum's rice dishes, such as the steamed white rice, red rice, turmeric-and-coconut-milk-flavored rice and the restaurant's specialty, nasi goreng cabe asap, or wok-fried rice with home-smoked chili paste, are made from Jatiluwih heirloom rice that is naturally grown by the farming community of Tabanan.
According to 64-year-old Balinese farmer I Gede Suweden, the community still uses the ancient subak system for irrigation, which dates back to the 11th century.
Paired with fresh prawns, cincalok (fermented krill), lemon basil and stinky beans, the nasi goreng cabe asap is a winning combination of non-sticky, high-quality grains and pungent aromas that are tasty enough for both local, sambal-loving and non-local guests to enjoy.
Lisa also established the Underground Secret Dining program in 2009, which involved taking a group of people into a culinary stroll away from the hip-decorated, air-conditioned restaurants in Jakarta. She went deep and far in her research to find the right ingredients for Kaum.
In addition to the heirloom rice from Bali, Kaum also sources its pork sausages from Singaraja, an area in northern Bali whose flavor profile is influenced by Indonesia's Chinese immigrants.
Each of the sweet-and-savory sausages is handmade and sun-dried for at least seven days before they are ready to use in Kaum's nasi goreng babi (fried rice with Singaraja lapciong, beansprouts, torch ginger and assorted field mushrooms). For the salt used to season all dishes at Kaum, Lisa found 32 craftsmen in Amed, eastern Bali, who produce sea salt by using aged coconut trunks. This practice gives the salt a clean taste with no bitterness.
Not every ingredient is sourced in Bali, though. The cabe jawa (Javanese long pepper) is one of the ingredients for Kaum's base genep (Balinese spice mix), which is used in dishes such as ayam betutu Klungkung (slowly roasted baby chicken, filled with mixed Balinese spices).
As brand director, Lisa said she is constantly trying to keep the restaurant's philosophy in sync with the Indonesian tribal heritage, as well as traditional craftsmanship. Apart from Kaum's authentic cuisine, Lisa also takes pride in the restaurant's farmer-friendly business model. This came about after she recognized the biggest problem facing every farmer was debt.
"It is hard to find farmers who produce good products. First of all, the farmer must be debt-free. If they have debt, they will harvest much sooner than they should, and we will not be able to get good products," she said. "This is why it's important to lobby restaurant owners and chefs to buy their products during harvest time for cash."
Lisa said she is lucky to be able to work with partners who believe in the value of using locally grown produce and ingredients. She joined the Potato Head group in 2012 and began her research with Audran, a chef with more than 30 years' experience in luxury hotel restaurants. He is also known as the founder of the Java Bleu French restaurant in Jakarta.
"Many restaurants don't put their priority in ingredients, but we are meeting with food producers all the time. This is because Kaum wants to showcase the authentic taste," she said.
The Potato Head bar and restaurant was established by Ronald Akili and Jason Gunawan in 2009. In the following year, the Potato Head group, PTT Family, opened the Potato Head Beach Club in Bali.
They expanded to Tanah Teduh residential estate in 2012 and the Potato Head Garage in 2013. Their number of projects continues to grow as the group established a burger gourmet site, Three Buns, the Potato Head Folk in Singapore, the Katamama Hotel in Bali, the Attarine restaurant in Jakarta and the Potato Head in Hong Kong.
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