BALI - part three:... NXT

 

The last time [2017] we visited our long-time friend Joel... a fellow foodie living in Bali,  he raved about a restaurant in Ubud called Locavore. Of course we we went, to discover one unique more-than-a-meal. It was an experience. I watched chefs plating food using tweezers!

Now for some months, as we planned the recent trip [November 2024], he was raving even more-so about... Locavore NXT.  I'm as curious as I might be skeptical... what's next!?

The experience begins with a drive down a long single lane driveway enclosed with tall old walls;  

there's an occasional gate, but little room for another vehicle. A set-up for an adventure! But then we come to a generous parking ramp seemingly tucked into the foliage... the first indication of the careful design of what becomes more a farm than garden. 

 

In fact, it is rather raw land. A feature catching my eye was a bamboo lattice leaning above a muddy plot. I deduced that it was a tool used to examine, analyze & catalogue the biomass of this plot of soil by means of this grid of a few square centimeters. 

This is not at all just another eatery, even if it is the latest child of a growing family of experimental  foodie ventures. We had marveled at a 20+ course menu featuring very local foods when dining at Locavore, which menu included baby wild field birds, skewered  & roasted whole...

So now... here... we are really off into the mud & weeds!

But we are also entering a sophisticated  piece of architecture. An elegant structure designed so naturally as to become almost invisible... a display case for a concept. This obviously has very deep thinking investors! 

To begin, we listen to a recorded welcome & introduction to the concept...

  With a wall of living specimens collected in jars behind us, we begin to perceive that we are in a laboratory for the immersive study of the biome of this place. 

 

To begin, trays were presented by young acolytes who were teach/learning their craft...

Introducing us to some of the variety from the land...

We are invited to examine, & touch... &, invited to play! To rearrange an arrangement of wild flora while we sip an elixir of some kind.

I was fascinated 'trying to suss what those specimens might be...

Being encouraged to play with our food was certainly not a problem! We continued taking lessons, meeting the two co-creating owner/partners [one of whom is the chef] who explain their dedication to the philosophy -- & realization that all must play, actually play!, with this life of learning.

We also need to play it smart!... as explained in part of the menu:

Knowing now the over-arching concepts,  we are properly prepped, as we move under the palm-like spread of the bar's roof,  to pass through the ornately carved & gilded doors of the elaborate portal... & actually enter... 

We visited  any number of spaces & places as the meal's education proceeded to present the potential of this institution of teach/learning:

 

The mushroom cellar was a rather eerie, low lighted space with a stairway down into red light... a very high tech mushroom cellar...

Then up to a demonstration of the digital library housing all the data being collected.

A food lab... as if this entire operation isn't that!

The food laboratory sported a group drawing made by the chefs toward a menu...

The entire staff is attending what is a live college course in food.

This is an aerial view of the entire campus:

A fermentation lab...

Meat curing facility...

After all these pieces adding to our education... 

 

At last, the dining room... 

Satisfyingly spacious design. 

Lively staff... front back & center ... cooking, prepping, plating...  all with attentive personal development as part of the service. 

Contemplation was in evidence. This is a school...

The meal of myriad courses was conflated by those side trips to the mushroom cellar; fermentation, aging  processes; numerous areas with high tech tools.

The descriptions on the menu... of which I did not keep a copy... would not communicate so well as these images...

 

 Several of those might could have been dessert!

  ... Still, there is always more... 

We were, after all, celebrating Joel's 76th birthday... postponed from last year, when the planning for this month's travel in Asia was first being planned.

HUZZAH!

PATH DOWN FROM THE NORTH GATE...

This post has been languishing in my drafts long enough!

A long-time dream-garden design came to fruition just before Thanksgiving, while having been started some weeks before, when Tom & I finally took salvage on an abandoned utility pole nearby... after which the builder in me had lusted for several years.

We went out with the chainsaw, but discovered it had rotted at the ground enough that Tom simply attached a rope to the original stabilizing cable attached near the top & pulled it down!

The theatre continued as we first cut it into pieces short enough to be rolled along our road the hundred-plus foot push to the north garden gate then dancing them into place with his good eye at the chainsaw to cut the subtle angles allowing the evolution as the curbs of the reconfigured path.

This geometric generosity replaces what had been a steep push from the Italian Cypress, in the middle-right of the image below, up to the gate which is at the top in the lower-left.

Over several recent years we have developed paths which allow us to rather easily move about material by wheelbarrows to nearly all the layers of our steeply sloping property. Firewood can come up from below the south slope [although we also have made several sets of rough steps as well, allowing choices to match one's energy & proclivities]. 

Compost, or gravel for paths, can be moved from it's delivery by truck on the road, can be wheeled down this path to the several levels of the north garden beds. We also have a "chute" which drops compost down a level below the road to be shoveled into wheelbarrows for the beds of the south garden. 

The "alley" between the house & the "Forge"... Stephen's writing cottage... transversely connects the upper lawns, both of which drop sloping to the level which connects them embracing the house in front of my studio, which I call the "Hold", nestling in the foundation. 

I posted in September, about this path, which Tom made, impressing me with its graceful simplicity & functionality.

It  inspired this new project. He regularly proves himself... I love being well attracted.

He inspired another project seemingly out of the blue at lunch on the deck one of our work days, to grow mushrooms...

Why not?!?

We  immediately made an order to Paul Stammit's Fungi Perfecti... committing us to choosing logs fresh enough to be virgin for our rough inoculation by drill & mallet after the kits arrived... This maple stump shows the process of plugging wood with bits of dowels impregnated with fungal spores & sealed-over with wax to prevent wild fungi from intruding.

We inoculated most of the nurse logs in the studio which will be moved to find the best seasonal light & moisture, hoping to have harvest beginning in 6-9 months. The instructions suggested that a month in dry warmth at the beginning is helpful. They got moved outdoors just in time to clean for the Open Studio weekends.

Obviously there is an adventuresome story being written for later!

This longer view from out in the "north lots" below the new path shows the permaculture bank we've been building for several years over an old slough in the property with organic material too rough for the regular compost bins... healing that crack by building soil & thus creating space for future planting close to the fire-pit there.