Food
Meals at Black Sand Dive Retreat
Your dive package includes three meals a day plus snacks in between. The kitchen is staffed by chefs in uniforms and service staff who have eyes in the back of their heads because when you decide to just sit at your table a little earlier than the official meal times, in what you think is an empty dining hall, they magically appear. They also top up your glass of water or remove your plate when you're done.
The food is presented very nicely, in the style of high-end restaurants. There is no buffet, and every meal including breakfast is a sit-down affair where you order your food and it is served to you. There's more on the ordering system and menu below.
Tip: If you're arriving from Singapore by Silkair, you should bring along some biscuits or snack bars. Even if you take breakfast at the airport before you leave, AND eat the light brunch served on the plane, your next meal won't be till 7pm and you may get hunger pangs in the afternoon. One option is to ask the driver to stop over at the supermarket (there's one called Samudera Mini-Mart) on the way to the resort.
Our 'own' table
Black Sand Dive Retreat has a lot of residents from the insect kingdom. You will share your room with a few chichaks (or geckos) who keep the mosquitos away, little beetles, and at lunch one day, we shared our table with this mantis.
Potato salad
Prawn Fritters
Yummy chocolate mousse
The wonderful snack table
The dining hall is pretty big, indoors, and with tall, tall windows that let in plenty of light. It's dry and up the hill, so it's not really a place you sit at with your swimsuit. At the same time, it's not pretentious at all, so you don't have to be like those ladies-in-heels at you-know-where. The tables can be joined together for larger groups, otherwise each room will have its own little table for a quiet meal. Each table has paper serviettes, and at dinner-time there are cloth napkins folded in a nice way. Their attention to presentation is probably one of the more striking things about this resort.
Menu
For breakfast, you can order eggs in any style you want, and accompany them with toast, ham or bacon. Sometimes they'll whip up something different, like Bubur Manado (Manado-style porridge which is very healthy as it's full of vegetables). Toast is served with butter and Knott's Berry Farm jam. You can also order coffee, tea, or orange juice. Iced water is always an option too.
At breakfast time or after your first dive, the service staff will approach you with a big ledger-style book with the menus for lunch and dinner. Both are three course meals, with a choice of two starters, two or three main courses, and two desserts. You just pick out one of each, and indicate your preference in the book. Every day offers a different meal.
The starters would usually be a cold salad of some sort (like prawn salad), or hot soup (like Tom Yam or corn). The main course would be anything from pasta with a cream-based sauce, to chicken in mild curry with rice, and stewed pork (which was one of my favourites) with rice. The desserts would usually be a choice of fruit or something sweet like ice-cream, mousse or cake.
The pictures on the right are just some of the dishes we had. We didn't take pictures of every meal because most of the time we were famished after our 90-minute dives and didn't have the willpower to restrain ourselves with photo-taking when the food arrived. Portions are just nice, not American-sized such that you burp or feel uncomfortable on your next dive. They will also offer you more rice if they see that the rice on your plate has disappeared. However, you may sink a little faster if you don't control your intake of goreng pisang during snack-time :-p (see below).
Not part of your package are soft drinks and beer. Soft drinks were mainly coke and diet coke (Sprite and 7-Up may not always be available), and the beer was Bintang beer. The soft drink costs US$2, and you just have to sign for it at the meal itself, and then pay only at the end of your stay when you check out.
Snacks
I can't decide which made me happier - the snacks or the meals. After your first dive in the morning, the nice ladies from the dining hall will greet you at the dive centre with a plate of home-made cookies or cake. There is also coffee, tea and drinking water.
The afternoon teas are the BEST. Goreng pisang topped my list, and coming in as ties were the chocolate cake and ba-lapis (Indonesian layered cake). One afternoon there was also fresh coconut juice with young coconut.
One day I whacked way too many goreng pisangs (but they were so nice) AND cake (see picture on the left). After taking a few pieces, the staff came to ask if they could clear the snack table, and I only took a second to say, 'wait, maybe just a few more pieces'. I almost couldn't finish my dinner after that. But it sure made me happy!
