KOPI BALI

First days are tough.  Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, starting out somewhere new will always be challenging.  After a Sunday night fraught with tears, we took our apprehensive eight-year old to his new school and stayed around until he felt that he was fine before we left.  With a sigh of relief after the tense morning, we decided to stop by Kopi Bali cafe right on the bypass in Sanur to have a quick breakfast and a cup of their famous coffee.

A Bali institiution, Kopi Bali is owned by the Butterfly Globe Brand which has been roasting and exporting coffee from their shop in Denpasar since 1935.  Here, coffee beans from Bali, Java and Toraja are roasted, packaged then distributed locally and exported to other countries as well.  The cafe is a showcase of their products and serves their coffee in many different ways.  Along with the standard espresso, cappuccino, mocha and macchiato, there are also iced coffees and even the chance to taste Kopi Luwak or civet coffee (200,000 Rupiah per pot of two espressos, around US$20).  The beans are actually coffee cherries eaten by the rare civet animal, which are then passed through the digestive tract (yes, it means exactly that!), processed and medium-roasted into a distinct coffee beverage.  Distinct to Bali, Java and Sumatra, only 300 kilos of these rare coffee beans are roasted yearly. I haven't tried this since I'm not sure I can get my head around tasting it.  At least not yet.

The place is modern and bright and filled with comfortable chairs and tables plus loads of magazines to flick through while waiting (here in Indonesia, magazines are very expensive so this is a good place to get some light reading done).  We ordered the set breakfast - orange juice, a coffee (cappuccino for me, espresso for A) and some toast.  The juice was fine although we couldn't quite make up our minds if it was fresh or not, the toast nothing great but the coffee more than made up for the lacklustre breakfast.  My cappuccino was perfect - the coffee flavor coming through and the milk perfectly foamy and even decorated with "coffee art" of a leaf stenciled onto the milk (see photo above).  Kopi Bali serves breakfast, lunch and dinner and coffee all day-long which is what makes this place worth the stop.  Maybe next time I'll stop by for at midday and see if their lunch offering is better.

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Kopi Bali

Graha Niaga Sanur Arcade

Jl. By Pass Ngurah Rai 405 E
Sanur, Bali, Indonesia
Tel. +62 361 270990