One of my favourite things about going to a new place is trying the new food. Nusa Lembongan was no exception; and I had gone prepared with a list of must visits.
On arrival we hired scooters and headed straight from our hostel to Sunset Point. We hadn’t intended on staying for dinner but the view of the sunset was just so jaw-droppingly beautiful that we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave. The waiter was incredibly friendly (he was very keen to chat with us about our adventures so far) and his service was great. There was a range of Western and Indonesian dishes available, but our main qualm (mainly from the boys) was that the portion sizes were so small – Andy had to order another whole meal. In saying that the pizza was pretty tasty, and the scenery alone makes this place worth the trip.
Another spot that serves up pretty decent pizza is The Deck, and it doesn’t do half bad on the views either. At the far end of the village beach lies The Deck, and it is perched up halfway up the hill. It has a really classy, intimate feel about it. Despite being incredibly busy, a bit of reshuffling saw us comfortable seated outdoors. We’d been told to go for the pizza, and we were happy with that recommendation – especially once we’d seen the prices for the rest of the menu. We made our order and waited… and waited… and waited… and waited. Eventually our meals came, but all at different times and not in a way that made us feel better about the excessive amount of money we then had to hand over. The staff were super apologetic, but I just wasn’t that impressed. On the plus side, our overly expensive coconuts were the brown eating ones and when we were done with drinking them the staff cut them up so we could eat our fresh coconut for pudding.
As per usual the healthy fresh places caught my attention and that is why we found ourselves heading down to the village to eat at Eco Deli. After parking outside we headed in through the lush, pebble garden (very zen feeling) to the cafe, where we joined a table that was already occupied by a few other people. We took a look through the menu and ended up making the decision to just share a bunch of stuff because it all sounded so equally good. A few smoothies (mine was a little heavy on the mint but still tasted fresh and healthy), some decadently rich chocolate fudge brownie, some moist and nutty banana bread and a scrumptious fruit salad and granola bowl. It all tasted heavenly. They had lots of healthy products on offer in addition to several flavours of healthy nice-cream. This spot was a personal favourite of mine – made even more funky by the big open kitchen behind the counter where you could see all the staff hard at work.
Last but not least comes Blue Corner, located at the other end of the beach of the village to The Deck. Mexican themed, Blue Corner makes for an awesome beachfront bar with beanbags and cocktails and a number of friendly dogs all begging to be your friend. We went early to catch the sun go down and over some tapas and cocktails we enjoyed the glorious views of the ocean. Once the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon we picked ourselves up and headed over to the rooted section to place our orders for our mains. Once we had done so we cracked into a game or ten of cards and waited… and waited… and waited… and waited. I’m not sure why we had such a run of bad luck but we had yet another meal forgotten. We were so busy thinking ‘surely not’ that it didn’t occur to us we should say something until about 45 minutes later. To our disbelief, they had entirely lost our order (and must have been thinking we were the worst customers ever!). Finally we got our food and it was a 7/10 – similarly to The Deck and Sunset Point. I would highly recommend this place as a place to watch the sun go down (and an okay option for food).
If you’re staying at Nusa Lembongan, chances are you will make your way across to Nusa Penida at some point. If you do, The Gallery is a fantastic stop; a gift shop run by a lovely British man with a yummy, reasonably priced menu to go with it. The vegan coconut curry was superb, and the fish and chips were interesting (a small fish deep-fried whole – bones and all!) but tasty.
