Room4Dessert, Ubud, Bali

Will Goldfarb is a pastry chef from New York. His accolades and awards would take too long to list and he may be the only chef ever to decline an offer of employment from Ferran Adria following his time at El Bulli. I won’t bother to rehearse his experience and resume from New York, his New Yorker profile Bill Buford, or anything else about him except to say that in 2009 he moved (with wife and daughter) to Ubud, Bali, population about 30,000. There, among other things, he opened a new incarnation of his famous Manhattan spot, Room4Dessert.


Room4Dessert, Ubud, Bali
Since we never saw the previous incarnation of this building, it’s hard to know how much was added to it or subtracted from it. But we would guess that it’s been changed a little.

Indoors, it’s pretty cavernous. Forty foot ceilings. A large undivided space set up as if for dancing: tables along the two sides, a bar against the back wall, and most of the middle space completely empty. Goldfarb gave us a tour after (there’s a garden and more seats out back); the kitchen is tiny beyond imagining. Which is probably why—at least for now—a lot of prep work took place on the bar directly in front of us.

(You can find a couple of his recipes online; they will perhaps remind you of a certain gentleman by the name of Achatz, with whom he shares a number of interests and a fundamental gift for creativity. You might also find this piece in the Wall Street Journal about his activities in Bali of interest.) The Lovely Dining Companion surprised me with a visit and dessert tasting. You can purchase individual desserts or taste them all. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention price when discussing a treat paid for by LDC but in this case, it’s hard not to overlook the tremendous advantage of having a world-class chef do the cooking for you in Indonesia. Most individual desserts run around $8; the tasting was a bit over $70. For both of us.

The pictures are lousy which is probably why he had no objection to my taking them. Far too dark, even with ridiculously high ISO. Check out his website for some great shots, though. And if you drop in, be advised: he loves, and plays, old jazz (think King Oliver old) on the record player his daughter gave him for a present!

[Note: the ingredient lists/descriptions are taken directly from the menu]


Passion you
R4D style black rice pudding with rambutan, passion and chia seeds for your health


Chocobubbles the teenage years
Warm chocolate mousse with my mom’s cookies, caramelized honey and lime…yum!
My personal favorite: rich beyond imagining, with the cookies offering some (unexpected) texture and the lime and honey complementing surprisingly well.


Todo sobre mi coco
Coconut milk, coconut cake, coconut candy, ‘tombong’
On occasion, you can find a smallish white ball inside a coconut. Sweeter when smaller; spongier when larger. That’s a tombong.


Goldfarb in motion

In this respect, Goldfarb reminds me of Homaro Cantu: constantly in motion, almost as if it were painful to stand still. Constantly talking. He’s interesting to listen to but, frankly, after a while, his intensity can be a little…tiring. Fortunately for us, Room4Dessert is quite popular in Bali—not among the Balinese (who can’t afford it for the most part) but among expats, of whom there is a fairly good-sized population. As a result, the place got busy and Goldfarb was kept occupied with his regulars. He clearly enjoys talking to people and he’s quite the host, so we were left alone more with only occasional visits as he delivered something or asked after us.

(No photo)
Loneliness redux
Incredibly light cashew sponge, fresh soy milk, raw cacao


The sugar refinery 2.0
Palm sugar, more palm sugar, mangosteen bitters, belinjo, balinese meringue

Belinjo, by the way, is a nut-like seed common to Indonesian cooking. There’s information out there on the web but I can’t tell you much in terms of its taste since it was clearly well-integrated in this dish. Not a distinctive flavor, so far as I can make out, but I was so otherwise lost in this dish that it would have taken more for me to recognize it as a separate ingredient. A meringue becomes Balinese (so I’ve learned) when it has a low (palm-) sugar content. Beyond that, there is a detailed description of how it is made here along with Goldfarb’s recipe.


Baba o rhiley
Desperately seeking rum soaked brioche, milk jam, snakefruit ice, cashew nutella

While we, like Goldfarb, are focusing on local ingredients, snakefruit is a remarkable little item…a fig-sized, fig-shaped fruit covered in a brown skin that is a dead-ringer for snakeskin. It is sometimes called salak. The fruit inside consists of three lobes looking like garlic cloves plus an inedible seed. The lobes taste like a cross between apple and pineapple. The sweeter ones are sometimes even made into wine.


Old jazz, old record player


Cheezus west
Armagnac refined camembert, langsat ‘raisin,’ no-knead ciabatta, kemangi pesto, rosella

Langsat: throughout Asia. Watery…both sweet and sour. Kemangi, as everyone knows, is Balinese for lemon basil. And rosella has no easy translation but describes a fruit in the hibiscus family. It can be found everywhere from Nepal to Brazil, France to West Africa. Flavor? Think Mexican jamaica. It’s common as a drink and we often saw rosella jam for sale as well.


Creme brulee
Just vanilla


Petit fours
Cocoa nibs praline, new style klepon, buttermilk biscuit, strawberry jelly

Klepon is traditionally a boiled rice cake stuffed with palm sugar and rolled in shredded coconut. But not here.

We don’t understand the oddball names (or descriptions, which vary between straightforward and weird) but that doesn’t really matter. We’ve never had a dessert tasting before; indeed, Goldfarb said he didn’t even come up with the idea. A customer who was intent on tasting everything did. A wonderful idea that it would be a kick to have some of the highly talented folks in Chicago offer. Goldfarb appears settled in Bali for the time being—in conversation, he wouldn’t say (because I don’t think even he knows) how long he expects to stay there. On the other hand, I imagine that he’ll be back and forth quite a bit. At least as long as he maintains the energy to sit on a plane that long. And if/when we’re back in Bali, we’ll certainly make time for another visit.


Room4Dessert
Jl. Raya Sanggingan,
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
+62 361 553-2598
http://www.room4dessert.asia/

Wow! When we were in Ubud in 1990, the place hardly had any paved roads. Ubud was known for its arts community-carvings and paintings as well as fabrics. No big name resorts and basically two main roads. Very quiet and peaceful among the rice paddies and temples. I think we splurged $12 on a hotel room.

I still haven't finished going through all the pics, including the food ones. Once I'll do, I'll post. In the meantime, I think it's safe to say Ubud has, um, changed. There are now three main roads!