The slow-food movement has crawled almost to a standstill in the lush uplands of Bali where the Chedi Club Tanah Gajah Ubud is now plating lunch and dinner fare sprung largely from the grounds of the resort. While farm to table movements are on the rise around the world, Chef Khairudin ‘Dean’ Nor thought he might do the movement one better by cutting out the costs of transportation almost entirely. The resort is rolling out lunch and dinner options every Monday and Thursday with ingredients harvested within 100m of the restaurant’s tables. Catfish is caught from a pond behind the garden, yams grow behind villas and cinnamon is ground from bark on a tree by the pool. The ‘Farm to Table’ experience is not merely a matter of eating, as it is equal parts horticultural survey, food prep and dining, all under the able hand of the Singaporean-born chef who has helmed the kitchens here for seven years. The experience begins with a fortifying drink, and a wade into the organic garden where the chef explains the ingredients among citronella, basil, curry leaves and Vietnamese coriander. The menu varies but some of the dishes include mushroom chawanmushi with pomelo, a soup of young mango wrapped in chives with a homemade stock with Vietnamese coriander and kombu, basil gelato and eggplant rolls with purple yam and topped with edible weeds. One of the chef’s favourite dishes is spicy bebek betutu duck, an iconic Balinese dish. The Farm to Table package can accommodate a maximum of six people.
