In Reply to: lovina restaurants posted by helenb on Saturday, 12. January 2008 at 13:26 Bali Time:
As it was recommended several times here and on other Bali sites, we recently went to Ponjok Indah with a party of 8.
When we booked, Fritz, the owner, asked us what kind of steaks we wanted. He had rump steaks and fillet steaks. We were a mixed group of Indonesian (all of them liked their steaks well done) and Europeans/Australians who liked their steaks medium or rare. So we decided on 4 rump and 4 fillet steaks.
We arrived at about 7:30pm. Somehow the place was not what we expected. In particular it lacked cleanliness. The plastic tablecloth was a bit sticky and the coasters must have been in service for several years. Anyway, We chatted to Fritz, one of our group was German so they spoke a bit in their mother tongue.
Fritz claimed that he is a specialist fruit juice and fruit wine maker. He also bragged about his goulash soup. So we ordered 6 fruit juices (the rest drank beer) and in addition to the steaks 3 goulash soups to share.
A short while later the drinks arrived. The beer was OK, but the juices were appalling. Those juices were way off. When we complaint Fritz said that "the juice may have been in the bottle for a long time, but it is good to drink". Only after I challenged him to drink one of the juices he acquiesced.
Then came the food...
The salad seemed OK.
The fries swam in old fat.
The steaks... Sorry looking gray pieces of old meat. Couldn't tell which was the fillet or which was the rump, nor could we tell which was well done and which was rare. They were all gray and cold...
And the worst was the goulash soup. The meat was rotten. They tried to disguise this with ample amounts of cheap wine and vinegar. DISGUSTING!
Between the 8 of us we ate just a few bites of the steaks, and the salad.
The rest we let go back. Funny enough they didn't seem to be astonished...
Then Fritz invited us to visit his "cellar". Everybody just wonted to leave, but I was too curious. Had to see this. So 3 brave souls went with Fritz to the cellar. In there are 6 empty 800 liter plastic drums and a few hundred bottles (second hand bottles like kecap ABC) filled with what he calls wine.
When he opened the first bottle he was surprised that it actually was sparkling wine. In other words the stuff kept fermenting while it was in the bottle. He gave another bottle a try and that on was OK according to him. Well the taste was horrible... We cut this testing short.
Then the bill:
Rp 80,000 for the steak (rump and fillet same price)
Rp 45,000 for the soup
Now, in Sanur and Kuta I get a very good steak for less money and 45,000 for this soup is robbery.
Aftermath:
My friends wife was sick for 3 days!
One of our party started vomiting shortly after and was sick for 2 days, the rest had the runs for a day.
In a word, the worst food you can get in Bali!
STAY AWAY AT ALL COSTS