Rockfish at The Uluwatu

The Restaurant

Rockfish at The Uluwatu — also known as Rockfish Cliffside — occupies a hollowed limestone grotto cut into the Bukit peninsula's southern cliffline, 100 metres above the Indian Ocean at the southern tip of Bali. The dining room is the building's defining argument: a cave-grotto interior of about ninety covers across a series of stone-and-timber terraces stepped down the cliff face, with two open-air decks suspended over the ocean drop, an interior bar carved into the cave wall, and a series of half-private alcoves cut into the limestone that take parties of two to six. The room opens at 3:00 PM and runs through the Bukit sunset — the building's western orientation makes the 6:00 PM dinner sitting one of the most photogenic in the Indian Ocean basin.

The kitchen is led by chef-owner Andrey Legkiy, whose career has run through Nobu, Asia Hall, Ginza, and a sequence of Michelin-starred mentor kitchens in France (under Didier Colly) and Italy (under Antonio Pisaniello). The cooking is contemporary fine-dining seafood with a serious Wagyu programme — the menu structures into a sashimi-and-crudo opening, a grilled-seafood centre, a Wagyu A5 robata section, and a tasting menu (Chef's Discovery, seven courses, IDR 2,800,000) for the bookings that want the full kitchen's discretion. Signature dishes include a Hokkaido scallop tartare with caviar and yuzu; a Mediterranean sea bass in a salt crust prepared tableside; a 21-day-aged Wagyu A5 ribeye from the robata; a whole grilled red snapper with a Balinese sambal matah; and a chocolate-and-coconut signature dessert that the kitchen has built around West Java cacao.

The wine list — about two hundred and forty references — is among the most ambitious in south Bali, with a serious Burgundy section, a working Champagne grower-producer programme, a careful Australian and New Zealand anchor for the Pacific-rim guests, and a Japanese-sake-and-whisky list that the chef-owner curates personally on quarterly trips. The bar programme runs a careful Pacific-tropical cocktail card with an emphasis on Indonesian aromatics — Balinese long-pepper Negronis, kaffir-lime gin sours, and a coconut-and-arak signature served in a halved coconut. Service runs at the polished-resort-fine-dining standard — Indonesian and international wait staff, bilingual, paced for a two-and-a-half-hour evening. The cliff-edge tables sell out for sunset twelve weeks in advance during the dry season.

What to Order

Start with the mahi mahi ceviche (IDR 130,000), brightened with pomelo and calamansi ponzu, the sharpest-value plate on the card and the one to open a table with. The kitchen's three signatures carry the meal: baked miso cod with pickled ginger shoot (IDR 315,000), lobster linguine in vanilla beurre blanc with pangrattato (IDR 395,000), and three grilled jumbo prawns in garlic soy and lime (IDR 450,000). The cod is the dish to order if you order one thing. From the grill, the 7+ wagyu picanha with Bordelaise and roasted bone marrow (IDR 380,000) outperforms the Australian rib-eye 10oz (IDR 725,000), which is competent but close to double the price for less character; skip it unless the table wants a straight steak. For two people the move is the ceviche, the cod, the linguine, and the picanha, with the sunset 6:00 PM seating booked weeks out. Tuna toro sashimi and kingfish tiradito round out the raw section for a larger group.