Menu

For breakfast, you can order eggs in any style you want, and there's a buffet of mainly continental breakfast items like white and wholemeal bread (which you can toast - there are two self-timer toasters), yoghurt in different flavours, cereal (the usual types like cornflakes and bran), freshly squeezed orange or pineapple juice. There's also usually one hot pot of something like fried noodles, fried rice, or porridge (Asian porridge though, not English porridge or oatmeal). There's also tea and coffee. They even have coffee plungers - these are available all day actually.

Left: fruits / Right: fresh juice, yoghurt, and cereal

If the resort is full, lunch will also be buffet-style. There's always a cold salad option like tuna sashimi, rice or noodles, and two or three Asian-style dishes like stir-fried vegetables, soup, and at least two desserts to choose from. One is usually a tart, pie or cake, and the other is a plate of smaller bite-sized items (which always taste nicer somehow) like Indonesian ondeh-ondeh (that's the Malay name though, and I think the Indonesians call it something else, but anyway, they're green or sometimes brown balls with melted brown sugar inside and coated with coconut shavings - YUMMY). I've put in a picture of that below.

From left to right: Soup, cold starter, and for main course, plenty of options from rice and noodles to curries and vegees

Desserts (the centre one is ondeh-ondeh)

If the resort isn't so full, lunch will be a sit-down four-course meal. The staff will take your order for this at breakfast time. You will have soup (one choice only), two salad options, two main course options, and two dessert options, and you choose one of each. Oh, when the staff take your order, you should highlight that you do want the soup. On our first day, we assumed that since there wasn't a choice, it would be served anyway, so we didn't say we wanted the soup. They will then take it that you don't want the soup at all.

The starter would usually be a cold dish or salad like gado-gado. The main courses included rice with chicken, pork or beef, pasta, or western-style meat with vegetables. The desserts were often quite atas, like pie drizzled with some sauce with a pretty name, but once in a while you will get the good old recognisables like goreng pisang (deep-fried banana fritters) or fruit.

Dinner is a sit-down four-course meal, and they take your orders for that at lunchtime. Before the food is served, you will be served buns wrapped in a napkin and nestled in a basket, with butter. The courses are pretty much the same as above - soup, starter, main course and dessert. During our stay, there was also a poolside barbeque on Sunday evening, and I don't know if that's a weekly or monthly or occasional affair, but they pulled out all the stops for that. Candle-lit tables, a children's choir from a neighbourhood school, lots of performing singers (including the resort's own all-male group formed by the security team), and a buffet of salad, rice, barbequed meat, fish, vegetables, and empeng (.... no idea how to describe empeng other than that it's crispy, very mildly bitter, probably deep-fried, and tastes great on its own, or with rice and anything with gravy). I think the dessert was served though, if I remember correctly.

The poolside dinner had a buffet table and lots of singing performances

At any time, you can order soft drinks, wine or beer. These are chargeable of course, and you just sign for them at the end of your meal. Iced water is free though - and free flow - and they'll thoughtfully put a full jug of this on your table, and top it up when it's running low.

The portions are just nice, and with four dives a day and climbing all those stairs to your room everyday, you will finish your four-course meals with no problems. Still, we never had to ask for more at the sit-down meals, except for dessert because that's for a different part of your stomach so there's always room for more dessert. We tried to be polite and asked for more goreng pisang way in advance at the ordering stage, so that they could just pile it on to one plate rather than giving us a second helping, but although the waitress wrote 'extra' on her notepad, the portion was exactly the same as if we hadn't asked for extra. Best to just ask for more when you're already having the dessert, and let them bring you a second helping.

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Snacks

The table in the restaurant that's permanently topped with coffee plungers, tea and coffee, is also the Snack Table in between meals. The trick is to know what time the snacks are laid out, and I never quite figured it out. Sometimes the staff brought it out to the poolside if all the guests were there, but sometimes it stays in the restaurant, so I'm afraid I didn't get a thorough picture of what snacks there were. I think it was muffins once.

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