Bali’s secret sugar-free supper club
There are hundreds of healthy-choice restaurants in Bali that serve organic, sugar-free, low-carb, vegetarian, vegan or locally sourced food.
But there is only one place on the island that does all of these in a “supper club”, or secret restaurant setting: Malaika Secret Home Restaurant and Bakery. Hidden in the backstreets of Sanur, a seaside tourist district in the island’s south-east, it is the brainchild of I Gusti Ayung Ayu Mas Malaika — Malaika for short — a Balinese restaurateur with three decades of experience and a member of the royal family of Tabanan, one of eight former fiefdoms and now regencies of Bali. Small, warm and intimate with 30 seats arranged at small and large tables around a pool in the courtyard of her family home, Malaika Secret is a kitchen laboratory targeting diabetics, vegans, gluten intolerants and health-conscious people. There are no menus, though you can choose vegan, vegetarian and nut-free options. Every evening has a theme. It can be Indonesian one night, Italian or Indian the next, with everything cooked from scratch and based on whatever fresh ingredients are available that morning. Meals consist of six or seven courses, along with low and/or zero-carb bread baked fresh on the premises. And there is not a gram of sugar or monosodium glutamate added to any of it.
Camera IconMalaika Secret. Credit: /The West Australian
“We also make sweet potato bread, using the fermentation process to reduce the glycaemic index — a way of ranking carbohydrate-based foods on how they increase blood glucose levels — in sweet potatoes to near zero.
“We also ferment our rice and coconut cheese so that people who are diabetic can eat delicious food in a restaurant setting — something that is difficult to find in Bali.” All the healthy mumbo-jumbo aside, Malaika Secret serves damn delicious food. During a recent Indian-themed evening I was served a watermelon entree topped with coconut cheese, carrot caviar, mint, chilli and lemongrass, that was as tasty, interesting and well presented as an entree in any fine dining restaurant in Perth, but for a fraction of the price.
My entire meal at Malaika Secret cost $25, drinks not included. The entree was followed by flourless mini vegetable samosas and seafood dumplings; a papaya salad sweetened with fermented cashew nuts and served with gluten-free bread and walnut butter; sweet potato gnocchi; and chicken curry with pumpkin chapati and fermented cassava root mash.
Camera IconMalaika Secret is the brainchild of I Gusti Ayung Ayu Mas Malaika, or Malaika for short. Credit: /The West AustralianCamera IconMalaika Secret is for health-conscious people. Credit: /The West AustralianCamera IconMalaika Secret. Credit: /The West AustralianCamera IconMalaika Secret serves delicious food. Credit: /The West AustralianCamera IconMalaika Secret is for health-conscious people. Credit: /The West AustralianCamera IconMalaika Secret is a kitchen laboratory targeting diabetics, vegans, gluten intolerants and health-conscious people. Credit: /The West Australian
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