I grew up in Canada and have always worked in culinary – I joined McDonald’s as soon as I could and went on to golf and country clubs before culinary school in Vancouver. This led me to Michelin-starred restaurants, in New York, Spain, Malaysia and Singapore.
Then, 14 years ago, I persuaded my wife Virginia to open a restaurant in Bali. Cuca is designed with a Scandinavian and Japanese feel: it is minimalistic, and everything is scaled back. Food-wise we serve tapas, cocktails and desserts. When we opened there was nothing like it in Indonesia.
We only use local ingredients, and everything is made from scratch daily. If we serve it, we make it. Our customers are global; all of them are tourists. The one thing they all have in common is that they love food, and that is our bread and butter, because we have no passing traffic being down a road in the middle of nowhere.
We built the restaurant from scratch, so I designed the kitchen myself. I think I have the best kitchen in the world because it flows perfectly. It is separated between the back for prep and the front where food is finessed and cooked. The functionality means that we can do anything from a light dinner service to a 300-people event.
It is an open kitchen with a 12-seat bar counter. We knew our work would be something worth showcasing, but that does come with challenges; you need to be aware that everything is visible.
I rely on three bits of kit a lot. We are in a hot tropical climate, so all our food is light with powerful flavors. First, we do a lot of our sauces in our Vitamax blenders. Second is our meat grinder, which we use to grind vegetables for stocks and different cuts of meat. Finally, we love salamanders – just to give dishes that last-minute temperature burst. We love putting food in there to gratinate it. If it is not working, it’s a real do-or-die.
Speed is built into the design; everything has to go out pretty fast. We have 25 people working in the kitchen during dinner service and everyone is Indonesian. We want it to be purely Indonesian in every way – from our building material to labor and ingredients. That makes Cuca a very sustainable restaurant
Tina Nielsen
