© 2011 Rudolf Helder - The Yellow Flower Café in Penestanan is an organic food restaurant overlooking the Ubud area.
It’s with some reluctance that I write about my latest find, a hidden gem that perfectly embodies Bali’s charm: Yellow Flower Café, an organic restaurant atop Campuhan, only reachable on foot or by motorbike.
Once you have made your way up the ridge on which the Yellow Flower Café is perched you become pleasantly aware that the motoring noises, once smothered by the brush below, surrender their mad mosquito buzz to the mating call of distant roosters, the chirping of insects, and the twittering of birds in the surrounding landscape. A narrow winding path leads you to where your curiosity would’ve taken you anyway and a small oasis awaits you at your next turn. Choose a table and relax, it’s the only thing required of you for the next hour or so. Service will be slow, as all food is made fresh in a small open kitchen in the corner of the restaurant, which itself is really not much more than a thatched roof and three walls, leaving a wide berth open at the footpath.
The menu is not very extensive, but if you are not too demanding and the excursion has left you hungry you’ll find something you like. Quality and price are a good match for the budget conscious. Try the pancakes with homemade yogurt for breakfast, the staple Indonesian dishes, or treat yourself to a raw chocolate cheesecake that is, as you expected, dairy free, but yummy.
The patrons here seem to stay in nearby rental villas or come for yoga at adjoining retreats. To be sure, they are not your average tourists, and by that I mean the gaping crowd that gathers around the Ubud market in the afternoon, bused in from Kuta and Sanur for the day and leaving in a cloud of exhaust by nightfall.
At Yellow Flower Café you are far removed from all that. Here the world revolves at its own pace.
So, find it, like it, but do as I do: keep it a secret. Promise?
© 2011 Rudolf Helder - Yellow Flower Café, Plant Pot and Fountain
