Room 4 Dessert is an award-winning restaurant known for its unorthodox dessert tasting menu in Bali. Helmed by Will Goldfarb, winner of “The World’s Best Pastry Chef’ in 2021, the restaurant has received praise for its avant-garde nature to desserts that showcase Bali’s nature and culture.
Bali isn’t the first destination that comes to mind when you’re looking for fine dining restaurants; it doesn’t help when Michelin hasn’t gone through the effort of starring restaurants in Indonesia. But, what Bali offers to R4D is a bounty of ingredients that any pastry chef could dream of; cacao, lemongrass, coconut, torch ginger and rosella to name a few.
The outcome is an inventive and magical experience that brings out the very best of Balinese food. Expect imaginative dishes like ‘Red’ which celebrates the ‘red’ ingredients of Bali with a mixture of sorbet, meringue, cake and cookies or ”Tartare with Apple’, a mind-blowing explosion of freshness in the mouth. And, let’s not forget the drinks – these deserve a shout-out in their own right. At R4D, they have been expertly crafted in-house, honouring Balinese botany with creations like ‘Secret Garden’ made from herbs in R4D’s garden, or ‘Teh Melati’ that combines jasmine, wormwood, lime and mint.
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Room 4 Dessert’s Tasting Menu: Golden Age
Whilst Room 4 Dessert advertises its experience as just a 7-dessert tasting menu, it’s so much more. Yeah, you get these artistic and sweet creations, but in addition, you also get 7 savoury dishes prior to the desserts and 7 petit fours to finish the evening. On top of this, with the menu changing from savoury to sweet to small bites, so does the atmosphere. As you progress through the evening you move from the bar full of natural light, into an elegant candle-lit dining room, and finally outside onto the garden terrace.
At Room 4 Dessert, the tasting menu is seasonal with typically 2 different “seasons” a year. When we arrived in June 2022, the menu was transitioning from Season 13 to Season 14, expertly named ‘Season 13.5: Golden Age’ so we got dishes from each.
Here’s our Room 4 Dessert Tasting Menu review:
Savoury Snacks
1 – RATATOUILLE
Starting off the meal we had good ol’ ratatouille. It seemed slightly out of place in relation to the rest of the meal, but it still tasted good. Big aubergine, onion, tomato and basil flavours.
2 – BANANA HEART
Banana flower fried crispy so that it tastes like crisps, with pickled shallots on top adding a tangy brightness. This was served with a “ketchup” of sorts, a yellow puree with a subtle flavour of carrot and turmeric.
3 – COURGETTE “TRUFFEE”
Paired with Moringa Tea
A fresh courgette flower stuffed with creamy ricotta, drizzled in a black shallot sauce. This sauce had been slow cooked for two weeks, resulting in a deep savoury onion taste with hints of orange that complemented the milkiness of the ricotta. This courgette flower paired with moringa tea, a tea made by roasting and blanching the leaf, brewing the tea and carbonating it, resulting in a fizzy black tea.
4 – KFC MUSHROOM LUMPIA
This dish was a take on ‘Lumpia’ or Indonesian spring rolls. A soy milk pancake took the place of the traditional crispy pancake, and the filling was replaced with KFC-Esque ingredients. After a few attempts to roll up the pancake and watching in despair as it stuck to the plate and tore, I decided to stop trying to be so delicate and scrunched it up into a messy ball. Crunchy mushrooms with flavours of smoky bacon, a hint of balsamic from the black garlic and a pop of yolk flavour from the quail egg in the middle.
5 – SWEET CORN CUSTARD
Another great corn dish. I don’t know if this is a trend but so many restaurants are putting corn dishes on their menu, but I’m here for it. At the bottom was a smooth and slightly sweet corn custard, dotted with smoky chilli oil. The cream on top had the same corn flavour as the custard, but a slightly different texture.
6 – TARTARE WITH APPLE
Now, Room 4 Dessert is meant to be all about the desserts but this might have been one of my favourite dishes. Hamachi fish marinated in lemon and dressed in creamy coconut mayonnaise, crowned with a disc of apple and lime granita. The granita was so fresh and zingy, cutting through the fattiness of the fish, and the flecks of coriander oil on top gave that aromatic accent that just enhanced the dish.
7 – JUST THE CRUST OF BREAD
For the bread course, we had “just the crust of bread” topped with creamy cultured butter, an earthy black cocoa-tasting puree made from kluwak nuts and red apple pickled with lime.
Desserts
Following our savoury snacks, we were escorted through the kitchen and into the next dining room ready for our desserts. Each of the seven desserts paired with a drink.
1 – RED
Showcasing all red fruits, this dish delivered on taste but more importantly texture. The smooth rosella cream at the bottom, the crunchy watermelon granita that melts in your mouth and the crisp dragon fruit meringue on top.
2 – GRILLED PAPAYA
Grilled papaya that cut like butter in a super tasty burnt coconut sauce where you got the flavours of coconut but also a caramel-like and almost savoury flavour from the burning. Three red sorrel leaves decorated the papaya with a slight tanginess
3 – INCIDENTE STRADALE
Translating to ‘car crash’ in Italian, ‘Incidente Stradale’ takes the classic tiramisu and reimagines it using Balinese flavours like coconut and Jamu, a traditional herbal drink with tamarind, turmeric, honey and lime. You still had your classic Italian coffee and chocolate notes in the coffee cream and chocolate decoration, but then the coconut butter vinegar gel which brightened the rich dish transported you across the world to Bali.
4 – STRAWBERRY
Strawberry took me back to primary school and the days of having rice pudding with strawberry jam – just a lot fancier. Rice pudding was at the base, followed by a slightly tangy and contrastingly cold strawberry granita and a frozen cempaka-scented meringue.
5 – APPLE “COOKIE”
Just like ‘Strawberry’ was a fancy rice pudding, ‘Apple “Cookie”‘ was like a refined take on that classic apple pie. Crunchy, buttery frangipane biscuit upon a frangipani-poached apple and served with a light and airy apple cream.
6 – WHISKEY, TORTURE, TURGENEV
I think this was my favourite dessert, if not for just the action-packed name. Smoky grilled pineapple, a crunchy biscuit and creamy vanilla gelato, all accentuated by the crispy wafer-like lime meringue on top.
7 – BUBBLES AND ISLANDS
This dessert was meant to be shared, so you eat half of ‘Bubbles’ or ‘Islands’ and then pass it to the other person. Maybe they had to combine these two desserts into one course because they couldn’t put 8 desserts on the menu but I wish I got a whole one for myself. The white dessert didn’t taste of a whole lot, there was a creamy base with a foam-like meringue on top. But the chocolate dessert had this super rich chocolate cream, with bits of crunchy chocolate nestled in the cream, and this slightly charred tasting chocolate biscuit on top.
Petit Fours
With the desserts over, we were escorted outside into R4D’s garden, where we enjoyed our Petit Fours underneath the night sky.
1 – WAKAME COCO
The first two of the Petit Fours came out together. Wakame coco was essentially a coconut cream, sprinkled with wakame seaweed, almost giving a green tea-like flavour to the cream.
2 – SOURDOUGH SOFT SERVE
Tangy sourdough ice cream in a deliciously crunchy, sugary cone.
3 – FINANCIER (TASTIER)
An almond cake that had a sugary chew to the sponge, served with a creme brulee cream.
4 – LITTLE LEMON DOUGHNUT
Golden-brown doughnut, filled with zingy lemon cream.
5 – PALM SUGAR CREAM PUFF
One of the best of the petit fours. A spongy choux bottom, filled with a caramel-tasting palm sugar cream and topped with a bite of chocolate.
6 – ROSELLA GUMMY
Soft, funky and chewy. This gummy was made from rosella kombucha, giving it a slight tanginess and that classic kombucha funk.
7 – TOFFEE FROM SAMSAMAN
The final bite of the night. A super rich, creamy, salted caramel. I want to say I could eat all 4, but the richness of the toffee, seemed to instantly satiate me – or maybe that was the other 20 courses I had before this.
The Drinks
The creativity of the food extends to the drinks. Too often with fine dining restaurants, the drink pairings are pretty poor. Wine pairings are boring and whilst I’d love a cocktail pairing, I don’t want to throw up by the time I get to course 20. But, R4D has both a regular cocktail pairing and a ‘spiritless’ cocktail pairing, which despite having no alcohol, has buckets of spirit. These cocktail creations are crafted in-house, using ingredients from Indonesia like Java pepper, kaffir lime and mangosteen syrup.
We went for the ‘spiritless’ cocktail pairing, which paired 7 non-alcoholic creations with each of the 7 desserts. Here are some of the highlights:
So, the green drink on the left was paired with the smoky, limey and vanilla flavours of ‘Whiskey, Torture, Turgenev’. This bright, citric and herbaceous creation was made from dill, mint and pineapple juice. In the middle and pairing with ‘Grilled Papaya’ was a take on ‘Jamu’, a traditional medicinal tonic from Bali. This amber-coloured drink had the classic flavours of ‘Jamu’ – turmeric and ginger but mixed with passionfruit juice as well. Finally, on the right and pairing with Netflix featured ‘Incidente Stradale’ was a slightly acidic and cinnamon-tasting drink made from frangipani syrup and a little bit of syrup.
The Experience
The atmosphere was Bali through and through, relaxing like a warm Summer night. As you enter, you’re escorted through R4D’s vibrantly green garden, filled with plants like galangal and pandan towards the open-air bar, full of natural light. The staff were incredibly friendly without being overbearing and were punctual with topping up drinks. On top of this, they were knowledgeable about the dishes and ingredients; sometimes bringing out ingredients like ‘moringa leaf’, when we asked them what moringa was.
I thought that changing dining rooms between courses would prove to be a hassle, but the whole evening flowed so smoothly. We went through 3 different rooms during the course of the dinner; starting with the open-air bar, followed by the classy candle-lit dining room and finally the garden terrace. Each room had its own atmosphere which seemed to elevate the dishes, the open-air bar was perfect for these light and summery savoury bites just like the elegant dining room matched the sophistication of the seven desserts.
Closing Thoughts
Room 4 Dessert is definitely worth it – and this is without even considering the amazing price for the tasting menu. If you’re looking for a fine dining experience in Bali, this is the place to go, plus where else can you get a dessert tasting menu!
The dishes and the drinks take full advantage of Bali’s rich bounty of ingredients. Some dishes explore flavours that you can only taste in this part of the world, whilst others, filled with nostalgia, transport you back to the comforts of home.
My only criticism of the food is the temperature. There was a huge variety of bites; the textures ranged from gels to crunchy biscuits and from creamy ice creams to icy granitas. On the flavour side as well, no dish was the same; chocolate, apple, strawberry, coffee, and whiskey, each dish delivered a different flavour. These were all great desserts, but unfortunately, they all ranged from room temperature to cold. Some of the best desserts in the world are served hot! Sticky toffee pudding, warm and gooey chocolate brownies, piping hot apple pie – combine these with ice cream and you have a slice of heaven. If R4D had some components in their desserts served hot, it would have been out of this world, but hey the food was still great.
Pricing and Booking Details
FYI: The prices are extremely reasonable for what you’re getting.
- Room 4 Dessert Tasting Menu: IDR 890,000 / £50 / $60
- Alcoholic Pairing: IDR 400,000 / £22 / $27
- Non-Alcoholic Pairing: IDR 200,000 / £11 / $13
Note: All prices exclude 21% Government and Service Tax (Common in Indonesia)
Address: Jl. Raya Sanggingan, Kedewatan, Kecamatan Ubud, Kabupaten Gianyar, Bali 80561, Indonesia
Book Here: https://www.room4dessert.com/reservations/
Thanks for reading our review of the tasting menu at Room 4 Dessert. Make sure you try out Room 4 Dessert’s Tasting Menu if you find yourself in Bali!
If you have any questions, let me know!
