The Best Restaurants in Ubud, Bali

I had peach ice tea (without a poached egg) and crispy skin barramundi with barley and herb salad and it was absolutely delightful. If I have to be completely honest with you – and I do, this being a blog about my own personal recommendations and what not – I wasn’t full. It was delicious, and I had a very satisfied tummy. You know when you eat something super healthy and wholesome and just know it was good for your insides? It was that. Did my desire for a Nasi Goreng come crawling back after about two hours? It sure did. So don’t head here with a hungry hangover. Go when you want a light lunch.

I’m also a sucker for somewhere I can sit and write. Milk & Madu had air con, comfy chairs and tonnes of natural light. I truly could have sat there all day writing if my daily budget allowed me to.

    Where: Jl. Raya Laplapan, Petulu, KJl. Suweta No.3, Ubud, Kecamatan Ubud, Kabupaten Gianyar, Bali 80571

    When: Daily 7:00 – 22:00

    Price: $$

As I just said, I’m a sucker for places where I can eat good food, and spend some time with my blog. So of course, my selection of the best restaurants in Ubud are going to be the places where I can do just that. When my budget says yes (Sorry Milk & Madu). Current has a 59k (£3) brunch offer which changes every day. I, by some miracle, unintentionally went on the french toast day (my fave brekkie). It was a treat.

The second time I went I had an 80k mahi mahi lunch special. It was absolutely delightful, but a little small. You know what? The portions in Bali are often just frustratingly small. I am not a small portion girly, unless we’re having multiple plates. But I really will stop complaining about it. I’m entirely ruining my recommendations. I assure you the ice tea, the lovely staff, and the speedy wifi made up for it. You can’t argue that even aesthetically it’s the co-working spot of dreams.

I didn’t make it here in the evening (two visits in 6 days felt quite enough), but they have live music evenings and cocktails. If the brunch is anything to go by, I would say it would be a hit.

Getting sushi can sometimes be risky business. So it may shock you to see me recommending budget sushi and seafood in my round up of best restaurants in Ubud. Especially when Bali belly is already threatening to make an appearance. Warungs are small, family run restaurants in Bali, and they generally serve traditional authentic food. So when we walked past one advertising sushi, I was both wary and intrigued. Thankfully, it was an unexpectedly delicious spot.

I played it safe and had some cucumber uramaki, but the rice was cooked to perfection and you could tell it was freshly made. I followed this with grilled prawns with veg and chips, and good god the prawns were juicy. They were soaked in this buttery garlicy sauce and the chips were handmade and deliciously salty. It was quite small obviously, but you know the drill by now. Overall success. I want to say ‘big slay’, but I’m trying to keep it professional. I also shouldn’t write when I’m hungry, because I’m borderline drooling over my keyboard thinking about it.

This ramen was LOADED with seafood. Crab, squid, clams, mussels and prawns. It was sensational. I’m truly going to think about it for the rest of my life. I would go back to Ubud just for this ramen, and feel no shame about it at all. All you gotta do is pick your spice level, from 1 – 4. Thankfully, we were recommended to go here by some friends, and they told us that it comes spicy. So we went with 1 since you get chili oil etc. and can tailor it to your spice afterwards. The chili oil was not needed. My noses were streaming. And I’m not bad with spice. Take that as a warning. Honestly, level one was perfect for me, it was the enjoyable kind of nose stream, I’m just politely suggesting that you keep it at that level, especially in 30 degree heat. The little crabs are quite fiddly and there’s not an awful lot of meat in them, but just get stuck in and see what you can do.

If there is one recommendation that you take seriously, let it be this one. You are darn welcome.

My friend and I became completely incapable of eating a whole main meal to ourselves. Instead we simply must share everything so that we can try as much as possible. It’s starting to hurt my soul being without her and having to order a main meal by myself. Anyway, you’re not hear to listen to my complaints – although with how many there are in this blog, you might not believe that. Oops.

Our desire to share in mind, we managed to find a place with pescetarian friendly small plates. We went for the corn fritters (my fave), roti (my one true love), calamari, and prawn dumplings. With the speed the food came out, and the price for the location, this easily became one of the best restaurants in Ubud in my estimations. We headed here before going to watch a Kecak Fire Show at the temple, and it made a wonderful pre-dinner meal.

You can take the girl out of Mexico, but you can’t take the Mexican food cravings out of the girl (that phrasing absolutely didn’t work, but I’m running with it). Sometimes you just need tacos, and on a Tuesday or Thursday when they only cost 15k (80p), you simply have to say no to the nasi goreng, and yes to the taco. 

We went twice, and over those two times I had fish and prawn tacos, both hard and soft shell, tortilla chips and salsa, and garlic crushed potatoes. Generally I would always say soft shell over hard (hard tacos are frauds), but if you got more than one of the soft, they got a little soggy by the time you got to the final one.

    Where: Nyuh Kuning Rd, MAS, Ubud, Gianyar Regency, Bali 80571, Indonesia

    When: Daily 8:00 – 22:30

    Price: $