Teatro Gastroteque
As one of Bali’s finest restaurants, Teatro Gastroteque is renowned for using the very best ingredients to make their award-winning dishes, and luckily for diners with a sweet tooth, this philosophy is not lost in their desserts. Cooked up by Chef/Owner Mandif Warokka and Executive Chef Daniel Edward, our favourite is Teatro’s Abinao Chocolate Cake, made with fine Guanaja chocolate. Guanaja is a very rich, dark chocolate that uses a whopping 70% cocoa. It is the best known variety of the revered Valrhona Grands Crus brand, sourced from the Bay Island of Honduras in the Caribbean.
The premium chocolate gives this flour-less cake a gorgeous, truffle-like texture; smooth and gelatinous and dusted with a puff of cocoa powder. The chefs then complement the dessert with a few locally-grown ingredients, like juicy strawberries and freshly plucked mint from Bedugul in the smoky highlands of Bali.
Despite the remarkably high cocoa content of the Guanaja, the intense kick of the dark chocolate doesn’t overpower the dessert or its colourful components. Perhaps it is the ideal balance of cocoa and sugar, the matching of a gooey raspberry purée in the centre, or perhaps it is our love of strong, chocolatey flavours – whatever it is, each bite is both perfectly bitter and scrumptiously sweet. (www.teatrobali.com)
