Homemade Asian cuisine restaurant in a beach resort from a Vietnamese chef
The Jali Kitchen restaurant is located in the Jali Resort. But it is not only hotel guests who come here to eat, but also numerous tourists and expats. In Tripadvisor, Jali occupies the first line in October 2018. When asked why and what is the secret, the founder of the resort and restaurant Eric says that probably the guests rate the restaurant's service highly, where it is customary to talk to guests and find out their opinion about the prepared food.
And of course, this is due to the excellent cuisine.
The restaurant is located in the courtyard of the hotel, right at the entrance. It is always cool here. The translucent roof gives enough light and shelters from the rain. But at the same time, it leaves a complete feeling that you are sitting outside in a nice and neat garden.
Jali is a tropical herbaceous plant whose berries are used to bake bread, make beads and rosaries and in Chinese medicine. Eric just liked this short and beautiful name and chose it without hesitation.
Jali was conceived as a restaurant of home-cooked Asian cuisine - Vietnamese, Thai, Indian and Indonesian. Eric, who is half Indonesian, and chef Peter, who is pure Vietnamese, together created a menu that is a reflection of their own passions in food. Before Jali, Peter worked as a waiter in one of the restaurants in Australia. But his passion for food and cooking helped him achieve culinary mastery in a few years.
Of course, the desire to preserve authentic tastes imposes certain difficulties. The taste of fish sauce and shrimp paste produced in Indonesia differs from the taste of similar ingredients from Vietnam or Thailand and they have to be imported.
Eric is very proud of his home-cooked style. The curry sauce is not made using a blender, but rather ground in a traditional mortar, so in the morning the restaurant's atmosphere is filled with the sounds of the kitchen. And if someone orders curry, the divine aromas of spices fly around the restaurant. The kitchen is open, allowing guests to look in and see how the food is being prepared, as well as to see that the food preparation conditions are very clean.
Grilled pork and spring roll salad is Eric's favorite dish. He loves it for its balance of diverse flavors. It combines the solidity of good, solid pieces of pork with lemongrass, the freshness and vigor of fresh and marinated vegetables seasoned with Vietnamese sauce, the tenderness of noodles and the crispy boldness of spring rolls with pork and shrimp. The salad portion is very large and can be taken as a full meal.
Another source of pride for Eric is, oddly enough, a dish that he was initially hostile to when Peter suggested it. This is a beef burger with peanut sauce. Peter created the dish inspired by one of the cooking shows and for Eric the very combination of these two was already mentally averse. But when he tried the burger created by the chef, he simply gave in and definitely approved it for the menu.
The subject of joy that Peter enjoys cooking is curry. All types of curry, full of spices and aromatic herbs. And in Jali there are really many types of curry. The most popular curries on the menu are Butter chicken curry and Panang curry, which can be taken with pork, chicken or in a vegetarian version.
In the chicken version, the chicken is cut into thin delicate slices, red pepper, zucchini and a rich scattering of coriander, cumin, black peppercorns, galangal, lemongrass, lime zest, garlic, shallots, shrimp paste and peanuts are added. Spices give the chicken a wonderful aroma, tickle the taste, but do not interrupt the sensations of the meat itself.
Jali also prepares Thai green curry, which will delight true gourmets. The thing is that Peter tries to remain honest in matters of preparing traditional food and make it traditionally spicy. Otherwise, what is the point of curry if it is made without spices? If you remove the spiciness of green curry, considered the most fiery of Thai, then the essence of this dish will disappear.
At the same time, Jali tries to prepare neutral dishes without an ethnic connotation, which will be understandable to everyone and will suit families with children, for example, pasta or burgers.
Jali serves juice mixes. The most popular are avokoko, tropical breeze. But Eric suspects that it is not only about the excellent taste of these juices, but also about their enticing names.
What to try?
Grilled pork and spring roll salad
Peanut butter beef burger
Thai Green Curry
