First taste: Gili Meno’s new Mexican joint

A collection of three sun-kissed islands in the seas between Bali and Lombok, “The Gilis” are pockmarked with great little restaurants and bars where tables and chairs are set on sugar-white beaches in settings cut straight out of the Maldives. The concept never gets old for tourists, though it does for the expats who live and work on The Gilis and who, every once in a while, want to eat and drink somewhere sophisticated, a place where cocktails aren’t served in Mason jars and the menu is not all about whatever the fishing boats reeled in that morning. To that end they head to the beach club at Bask, a small luxury hotel set on the apex of Gili Meno, the smallest and least developed of The Gilis.

There, executive chef Bastian Marcel, a Chilean national who’s worked at the helm of many of the biggest and best beach clubs in Bali, weaves his magic, punching out top-shelf dishes like dry-aged rib eye steaks with cafe de Paris butter and house made gnocchi with butternut veloute in a classy, atmospheric setting.

Throw in a fully stocked wine cellar, a dry-ageing cabinet for prime beef, deep comfy booths and an underground nightclub/jazz bar that looks into the resort pool where you might find Bask’s owner, Australian Greg Meyer, a professional jazz singer, belting out some Frank Sinatra tunes, and you’ll see why Bask is the only place for “adults” to enjoy “a night out” in The Gilis. So when I heard that Bastian and Greg had opened a second restaurant on Gili Meno, a South American-inspired joint called Pomona, my interest was piqued, and I caught the speedboat over from Bali to check it out. With pink-washed walls, baby-blue picnic tables and custom-made cutlery and dishware, the Mexican motif at Pomona fits the uber-tropical environment like a glove, like something you’d expect to find on the white shores of Cancun or Playa del Carmen. There are three different dining areas at Pomona. An inner courtyard with cacti plants and a hacienda feel, the interior which features high-arched doors and windows, deep, comfortable booths drowning in pillows, and, finally, an al fresco dining area out front that leads onto the beach and is fronted by a row of beanbags. Facing west, the sunsets are epic.

The food at Pomona is more Tex-Mex than the Chilean fare I was expecting from Bastian, with dishes like fries loaded with chorizo sausage, Baja fish tacos, spicy chipotle wings and beef “anticuchos” — Peruvian style tenderloin skewers with pickled red onions, coriander and chilli oil. The skewers are the best meat on a stick I have ever had in my life (with the exception of lamb and raw onion kebabs I ate at a gypsy camp in the Zagreb Mountains of Iran, which were otherworldly).

The other dishes I had at Pomona were good, absolutely nothing wrong with them, but I feel they were all missing “heat” — doubtlessly a decision Bastian made to appeal to the target market, which is mostly Westerners. I’d like to see Bastian wind that back a bit, because spice in South American cuisine is not just about the heat; it adds a depth of flavour and texture that simply can’t be replicated.

Pomona is also 100 per cent gluten-free. Bastian pulled the move off with aplomb with his nachos and taco shells. They are crunchy like an earthquake. The gluten-free churros, however, lack crunch and need a rethink. But now I’m being a bit of a food snob, something I promised myself I would never become when I began reviewing restaurants way back when. Pomona offers a colourful, novel and much-needed addition to the Gili Islands dining scene. Four stars. See instagram.com/pomona_gilimeno *Ian Neubauer was a guest of Pomona. They have not influenced this story, or read it before publication.