Quarter Guide

Real places. Honest guides.

Bali

Fabian Monroe ยท updated 2026-08-15

The south of Bali is four or five separate places pretending to be one island. Uluwatu wakes at six, eats at seven and drives everywhere. Canggu queues for coffee. Seminyak books a table. Ubud is an hour inland and eats differently again. A list of the best restaurants in Bali is useless to all of them, because nobody drives ninety minutes for breakfast.

So this section takes them one at a time. The neighborhood guides are being written now. Until they land, start with the two dishes below: each list crosses the whole south of the island, and each entry says what the kitchen actually serves and what it costs.

Limestone cliffs on the southern coast of Bali with the Indian Ocean below
The south coast. Photograph: Thomas Fuhrmann, CC BY-SA 4.0
Shakshuka in BaliNine kitchens that actually put it on the menu, from Uluwatu up to Seminyak.Hummus in BaliTen plates, from a hummus bar in Canggu to a mezze in Balangan.