Behind the design: A Royal Dinner at Ibah

We were honored to helm the design and production of a private dinner for 50 people at the Ibah property hosted by the Kerthyasa family. The dinner was created for guests to meet members of Ubud’s royal family and to learn about Ubud’s history and heritage, while experiencing it surrounded by the stunning architecture and landscape of the property.

Facing the threat of rain in a very unusual August climate, we pivoted in the last 48 hours to redesign the event spaces and rethink the whole evening, a massive undertaking for the team and Ibah. We moved the dinner into the lobby area, kept the cocktail area in the main restaurant, and created a stage and seating for audience in the garden.

The guests entered through a traditional Balinese stone gate decorated with handwoven gold accent pieces, after being greeted by a friendly barong troupe. They then passed by the animals of Bali, wayang leather shadow puppet figures emerging from the garden beds as they walked towards a sole dancer positioned at the end of the walkway.

Some of the Kerthyasa family members gave a brief talk after cocktails were served under open skies to help guests gain a deeper understanding of Ubud. They presented against a beautiful hand-woven leaf backdrop featuring traditional Balinese floral motifs.

The tablescape featured local flowers like marigolds, hydrangeas, and strelitzia, interspersed with handwoven traditional Balinese offering components. Place names were held by intricately pieced together offering components representing the head of a dancer.

Lighting came from human-sized standing lotus lamps and hanging lotus blooms, all made from natural leaf materials, and candles wrapped in banana skin lining the footpaths.

Ibah is located on the historical grounds of the Campuhan Valley by the Wos River in Ubud, built on ancestral lands that were gifted as a wedding present to the founding family.

The property serves as both a sanctuary for travelers seeking a ‘old Bali’ experience and a vibrant tribute to preserving classic Balinese culture. Tjokorda Raka Kerthyasa holds the position of Bendesa Adat of Ubud (Head of Customary Village Organization) since 2009 and is one of Bali's respected authorities on culture and local traditions.

The Ibah property represents a beautiful blend of royal heritage, cultural preservation, and hospitality, maintaining its ancestral significance while serving as a luxury accommodation for visitors to Ubud.

Ring of Fire Dinner and Screening at Kaum, Potato Head Bali

We set sail for the Spice Islands in Kaum at Potato Head Bali for a special screening of Ring of Fire. An incredible experience. Curated with Maya Kerthyasa, we turned the room into an immersive theatre.

The dishes on the menu were inspired by various scenes from Spice Islands Saga – the first volume of the five-part series Ring of Fire that documents the ten-year voyage of two filmmakers, brothers Lorne and Lawrence Blair, through the islands of Indonesia.

Some of our favorite details:

1. Welcome aboard the Sinar Surya. We recreated the ship’s lettering on the door to Kaum.

2. Feeding the senses: on the table for the Ring of Fire: Spice Island Saga we had fresh cloves, clove flowers, fresh nutmeg fruits, black tea, salt and seaweed to help scent the air with island and boat smells.

3. We took inspiration from specific frames from the Spice Island Saga episode to help us design the event. From the boat colors and materials, to plates and raw ingredients, we scoured each second for cues, like these hand-carved googles we recreated.

4. Jars of live crickets: a nod to the scenes where the film makers share their quarters with variety of creepy crawlies.

5. Pages from the book that started it all: Alfred Russel Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago. We added the pages to the table and around the restaurant.

A description of nutmeg from John Cameron in the mid-1800s: "The nutmeg is a very beautiful tree; when of full size it is about twenty-five or thirty feet high, and, if well-formed, should have a diameter from the extremes of its lower branches of little less...The fruit grows slowly (and until) within a few days of ripening, might be readily mistaken for the peach; it is of the same size, and has the same downy texture of the skin--all it wants to complete the resemblance is the pink cheek. When⁠ the nut inside is ripe, the fruit splits down the center, and remains half-open, discovering the bright crimson mace that enshrouds the nut. In a few days, if not gathered in, the fruit opens wider, and the nut, with the mace around it, drops to the ground, leaving the fruity husk still hanging to the tree, till it withers away and falls off. When the nuts are collected, the mace is first carefully removed and placed in the sun to dry. Under the mace is a thin hard shell containing the nutmeg, and this is not broken till the nutmegs are prepared for shipment. A good tree yields 600⁠ nuts per annum, or about 8 pounds weight. There is no particular season for the nutmeg crop, and the blossoms and the ripe fruit may often be seen hanging together on the same branch. Altogether there are few prettier trees- prettier in form,⁠in foliage, in blossom, and in bearing, than the nutmeg."⁠

From The Banda Islands: Hidden Histories and Miracles of Nature

“The Blair Brothers sailed with pirates aboard their black-sailed schooners in search of the Bird of Paradise, struggled through rapids and deep jungles searching for elusive nomadic tribes, witnessed veiled forms of human sacrifice and found themselves drawn into ten years of danger and discovery in a magical land where ancient myths still flourish.”

Things to know about: Paon by Maya Kerthyasa and Wayan Kresna Yasa

We are beyond excited to see this book come to life! Congratulations Maya Kerthyasa and Chef Wayan Kresna Yasa!

Maya said: “Chef Wayan and I have been on a bit of an adventure together. An adventure that has resulted in a book titled Paon—recipes, stories and essays that celebrate the food culture of our ancestral land, Bali. With photographs by the unstoppable Martin Westlake and illustrations by yours truly. We can’t wait to share it with you.”

Preorder at Periplus or Amazon.

Sharing more than 80 dishes alongside essays and beautiful photography capturing the life, culture and food from across this widely beloved island, Paon shines a light on the depth and diversity of Balinese cuisine, with insight into food and worship, sacred fare, and zero-waste cooking.

With dishes ranging from elaborate ceremonial cuisine such as Bebek Betutu (Ubud-style smoked duck) to dishes that rely only on the simplest ingredients enjoyed at their unadorned best, such as Be Panggang (grilled spiced snapper), Paon reveals a largely untold story of the island: everyday Bali, modern Bali, agricultural Bali.

“A lot of recipes going back centuries were given to us from the Hindu gods and translated into dishes. They’re not written down. That’s why we cook complex and labour-intensive meals and give cooking so much love and attention. We also believe that the energy put into offerings for the gods will translate into good karma."

Maya Kerthyasa

The Dinner Series: Water Tiger

In the spirit of celebrating and connecting Bali’s brightest thinkers, Elami and Co. launched The Dinner Series: a string of intimate evenings in collaboration with Bali’s top cooks, artisans and creators in 2019. After a two-year hiatus, The Dinner Series 2.0 is back in 2022!

The Dinner Series is co-created with Maya Kerthyasa. Maya is a writer and has her first cookbook coming out in 2022 from Hardie Grant Publishing. In a past life, she worked for the Australian Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide.

We design each event to tell a piece of Bali’s story, from past to present. We felt the story of China’s influence on Bali is an unknown one and wanted to take the opportunity to explore it through food and culture. And from there the Water Tiger Dinner was born!

We knew from the minute we planned this dinner we wanted to invite a very special guest: Eve Tedja, a journalist based here in Bali who is of Chinese-Balinese descent. Eve Tedja is also associate editor of Epicure Asia. Eve was the subject of a beautiful article on the legacy of China-Bali relations written by Risiyana Muthia. She shared her story with the table before we started the meal.

We gathered to celebrate the Water Tiger, and also to pay homage to the deep cultural bonds between China and Bali which date back centuries and are interwoven in many different ways throughout our cultural and spiritual lives on the island. The guests were seated based on their shio, or Chinese zodiac animal and each guest had an origami animal waiting for them when they sat down.

Our meal was crafted by chef Dwi Perkasa from Fu Shou Noodle Club, who prepared a beautiful spread of Chinese and Balinese-influenced foods for our meal. The tea was from the Kerthyasa family’s farm up in Bedugul, grown organically, rolled by hand and roasted over wood-fire.

21 incredible people gathered around the table to celebrate, taste, and soak in the atmosphere. We were visited by two very special guests: the Naga Langit Barongsai and the Balinese barong from Ubud Kaja.

The Write Away Project

We’re collaborating with the talented Maya Kerthyasa once again on something special- the Write Away Project:

Hey, remember postcards? It’s time they became a thing again. Our stationery is designed to resurrect the hand-written word – to get you off your keyboard, out of your DMs and back into the good old-fashioned art of letter posting.

Our designs come courtesy of local artists on the island of Bali, Indonesia.

Unplug. Send your love. Write Away.

We love the idea of reconnecting through something we can hold in our hands and put on a plane, ready to wing its way across islands and seas to find its new home on a cork board, fridge door, edge of a mirror, or carefully tucked away in a a journal.

Maya’s discovery of her talents with ink and paper and her special connection to Bali were the perfect way to kick off the project. In the future we hope to work with many more of the island’s artists to create their own Write Away collections.

Bali Snakes and Ladders! The launch of a new game

We've wanted to create a game for years and thanks to this pandemic downtime, we've finally done it! Maya Kerthyasa lent us her amazing line drawing skills to create a board filled with Balinese myths... Snakes and Ladders, known as Ular Tangga in Bahasa Indonesia, has its origins in second century India.

“This version of Snakes and Ladders is inspired by Balinese life and mythology. At the bottom, we have Bedawang Nala—the turtle that carries the world—accompanied by the two dragons Basuki and Anantaboga. Spiritual nirvana is represented by Mount Agung and the heavenly realm above. The other illustrations are symbols of fertility, creation, enlightenment, abundance, death, disease, disaster and knowledge. Many of these symbolic drawings are inspired by life in and around the Balinese kitchen.”

—Maya Kerthyasa

More about the history of the game:

The game was popular in ancient India by the name Moksha Patam. It was also associated with traditional Hindu philosophy contrasting karma and kama, or destiny and desire. It emphasized destiny, as opposed to games such as pachisi, which focused on life as a mixture of skill (free will) and luck. The underlying ideals of the game inspired a version introduced in Victorian England in 1892. The game has also been interpreted and used as a tool for teaching the effects of good deeds versus bad. The board was covered with symbolic images, the top featuring gods, angels, and majestic beings, while the rest of the board was covered with pictures of animals, flowers and people. The ladders represented virtues such as generosity, faith, and humility, while the snakes represented vices such as lust, anger, murder, and theft. The morality lesson of the game was that a person can attain salvation (Moksha) through doing good, whereas by doing evil one will be reborn as lower forms of life. The number of ladders was less than the number of snakes as a reminder that a path of good is much more difficult to tread than a path of sins. Presumably, reaching the last square (number 100) represented the attainment of Moksha (spiritual liberation).

-Wikipedia

The specs:

» 50cmx50cm fabric board—screen printed on 100% cotton

» 2 wooden dice

» 4 stone tokens

Shipped in a handmade paper box.

Get to Know: Maya Kerthyasa, food writer

We have been working with Maya Kerthyasa to co-create The Dinner Series. We want more people to know her the way we do, so we sat down with her and asked a few questions of our favorite food writer.

Would you like to share a little about your background and interests with us?

I am half Balinese and half Australian. I grew up between Bali and Sydney and studied journalism. Since then, I’ve worked mainly as a food writer. I spent four-and-a-half years at Australian Gourmet Traveller Magazine and wrote a little bit about travel, but my strongest love is food. And that’s something that I’ve been interested in since I was born, really. I spent a lot of my childhood running around the back of house at Ibah, my parent’s hotel in Campuhan. And I think, through that, I developed a really strong love of hospitality.

I did my first restaurant review when I was nine years old with a dear friend of mine, Jane Adams, who has become one of my biggest mentors. I remember the day vividly, and from that moment on I have been fascinated by restaurants and food culture as a whole.

When I was working in magazines, I was lucky enough to eat and write about many different kinds of food. Now that I’ve had a child and am spending more time at home, I’ve made it my mission to focus on the food of Bali. It’s so layered, complex and full of cultural significance, but it just isn’t spoken about internationally. I’d like to change that, and so that’s where I am at the moment.

Maya and her grandmother in the kitchen

What makes you interested in food and Balinese food?

Well, I have a very healthy appetite. That helps. I’ve been fortunate enough to have eaten some really wonderful food not just in Bali, but around the world. Both of my parents are good cooks. So many of my fondest memories are connected to cooking and eating.

I’m also really lucky to still have both of my grandmothers, who cook in very different but equally wonderful ways. Food is an interesting way to explore not only the flavors of a place, but also its history and culture. And that’s why I love it. If you dig deep enough into most traditional cuisines, you’ll find they are laced with stories. When you dissect the ingredients, the way they’re prepared, you might see the history of a place, how it’s been influenced by other cultures, colonialism or immigrants. You can see how food is used as medicine, how it’s used to celebrate, even to mourn. So, for me food is such a strong vessel for discovery and connection.

What is the story behind The Dinner Series?

I have a lot of respect for Mila, Daniela and the Elami team, so I was really excited when we started talking about The Dinner Series. It’s started off as a conversation and then slowly it grew, and we did the first dinner at Green Village with Wayan Kresnayasa from Potato Head, which was such an amazing way to start.

Mila and I both saw an opportunity to create eclectic boutique events in Bali. Not your run-of-the-mill party or festival, or four-hands dinner – events that truly connect and inspire people in the creative field. I wanted to give some love to the people doing solid stuff in the culinary scene. And for Mila, there was a strong creative drive. You know, life in Bali changes so rapidly and these days we are all so divided by geography, traffic jams, and our own busy lives, that we don’t really get together as much as we used to. So, I think there’s a bit of nostalgia in there as well. To put it simply, we want to find people doing great things and celebrate them in the most interesting way possible.

What projects are you immersed in right now?

The Dinner Series of course.

I am also in the process of recording my Balinese grandmother’s recipes in the hope of compiling them into a cookbook. I think there are so many layers to Balinese food that I haven’t yet explored, so I’m calling it a book about the food I grew up with. It’s taking a while, but it’s allowed me to spend some really precious time with my Niang who is in her 90s. And learning as much as I can from her, in more of a hands-on sense, as opposed to just writing and recording. It’s a very different approach for me, but it’s teaching me a lot about my culture, my family and who I am as a cook and a writer – having that ability to slow down and be truly conscious in the kitchen.

What is your routine to get inspired?

Every morning I try and do three pages of free writing. I’ve got a book especially for this, so I sit down with a cup of tea and my favourite pen and just write anything that comes to mind. Sometimes it makes no sense, some days it’s more of a diary entry, other times I’ll just write about the way the morning light is touching the kitchen bench that day. There are really no rules and it just gets my creative juices going.