We first met Norberto when he was first appointed as W Bali – Seminyak’s director of culinary, and we were charmed by his infectious positive attitude. Now, a year later, we caught up with him to see what he and the trendy hotel have been up to.
E: It’s been quite a while since you joined W Bali – Seminyak. What have been you and the restaurants up to?
A: We’ve just wrapped up our fantastic chef collaboration event at Starfish Bloo with my good friend, Chef Mark La Brooy from Three Blue Ducks in Australia. We went fishing and cooked the catch of the day, and inspired guests with the importance of having a great garden and looking into the resources on our food products. Last Easter, we did an amazing collaboration with Asia’s Best Pastry Chef Janice Wong from Singapore – and until now, I still receive great feedback from our guests who keep mentioning how great the event was. And indeed, it was a fantastic Sweet Easter Brunch with almost 400 guests attending!
E: FIRE has just launched a new brunch menu. How would you describe the new menu and how does it differ from the brunch at Starfish Bloo?
A: Since I arrived in Bali, we’ve been working on the narratives of the restaurant, defining what food concept we want to serve to our guests. With its core concept, we came up with Ember by FIRE – an elevated Sunday brunch ritual that was a dream we have been working on since the beginning of the year and is now rolling every first Sunday of the month. The new brunch is the super W style with abundant food all around you featuring live lobster, caviar, Tomahawk, homemade smoked duck breast, cheese trolley and something sweet to cleanse the palate! Meanwhile, the brunch at Starfish Bloo is totally different, where you go through the live cooking stations with offerings that are completely different from the menu at FIRE. Starfish Bloo’s brunch is always the funky one, we created a new BBQ station at the garden with a charcoal grill in front of you, as well as a vegan station where we picked the veggies from our own garden.
E: What are the next culinary plans for W Bali – Seminyak in the near future?
A: More collaborations by bringing great chefs to come and play with us and make our guests smile. One of our key pillars at Starfish Bloo is local heroes – and we will have some surprises around that by involving the local culinary community. The programme that will be launched soon is Run With Chef, inspired by my hobby to do morning runs. I want to engage with our in-house guests to do this activation with me – then I will prepare a healthy menu for guests to enjoy after the activation. Festive season is approaching very soon and we have started to brainstorm on how to get our guests’ mind blown for the most awaited season. Yes, we plan early as we want to be ready for this!
E: How would you describe your personal cooking style? Do you incorporate it in your creations for W Bali – Seminyak?
A: For me, managing a hotel’s kitchen with a team of almost 100 talented chefs and five different menus in each restaurant, with its own narratives, needs teamwork so this is not about myself anymore. When I was the chef de cuisine, as an Argentinian chef, I always use the wood-fire method, burning food with charcoal with Latino vibes. I always use my method to brainstorm, cook and see, try and see – so it’s a lot of fun, we find a product that excites us, and then we play with different cooking textures, fermentations, etc.
Exquisite Taste Volume 40
W Bali – Seminyak
Jalan Petitenget, Kerobokan
Bali 80361, Indonesia
T: (+62) 3613000106
E: reservations.bali@whotels.com
IG: @wbaliseminyak
