And after the Dutch colonised the archipelago in the 16th century, they added new foods again, such as sosis Solo – sausage processed with garlic, pepper and nutmeg that is named after the Javanese city where it was created.

Today, Indonesian cuisine is fusing once again, though this time different elements within itself.

“In the second half of the last century, chefs merged Indonesian food with Western and Asian and called it modern Indonesian cuisine,” says Kevindra Soemantri, a restaurant critic, author and indigenous-food advocate in Jakarta, who hosted the Indonesian episode of the Netflix Street Food series.

“But today, Indonesian chefs are taking inspiration – be they ingredients, recipes or cooking styles – from other parts of Indonesia to create a fusion of many Indonesian cuisines,” Soemantri says. “And with that, we are witnessing the creation of dishes we’ve never seen before.

“That’s what makes modern Indonesian one of the most exciting cuisines in the world.”

To put Soemantri’s claim to the test, I travelled not to Jakarta, Indonesia’s political and financial capital; nor Yogyakarta, the cultural capital, but to Bali, the so-called Island of the Gods.

There, a post-pandemic tourism boom has attracted migrants from across the archipelago and overseas to create the most diverse cultural melting pot in the country – and a dynamic dining scene to match.

I am not there to flout my nonexistent six-pack by the oceanfront infinity pool but rather to increase my girth further at Kaum, which is also the Indonesian word for “tribe”. (Hongkongers may recall a chapter of Kaum that traded from an old corner building in Sai Ying Pun until the city’s lengthy pandemic lockdowns contributed to its demise in 2022.)

According to the original restaurant’s website, Kaum’s culinary team have travelled to lesser known parts of Bali and across the wider archipelago to study the recipes, cooking techniques and ingredients of Indonesia’s ethnic tribes.

Taking what they learned, they then jazzed it up at laboratory kitchens and created an extensive menu with bespoke cocktails to match.

The babi genyol, or “flabby pig”, captures the flavours of a centuries-old ceremonial dish and presents it in bite-size strips of pork cheeks dusted in dried shallot and chilli.

Where to eat what Anthony Bourdain called ‘the best pig I have ever had’

It pairs perfectly with the Curry Temptation cocktail, which combines not gooey brown curry sauce as I imagined but curry leaf and lemongrass syrup with a citrus vodka kick.

Then there’s the lawar bebek, an uptown version of a traditional Balinese meat salad made with minced duck meat and served with duck skin crackling.

All the food at Kaum is unputdownable but, being islanders, what the chefs here really excel at doing is cooking seafood such as the barramundi fillet marinated with tamarind and turmeric paste based on a recipe from North Sulawesi.

It doesn’t just melt in the mouth – it dissolves. And the Jimbaran Bay prawns – another Balinese staple – glazed with a honey-sweetened version of the traditional chilli relish baste are as good as prawns can get.

“We take these traditional recipes that are lesser known to the public right now and elevate them to restaurant level in the hope of sharing more Indonesian culture with the world,” says executive chef Daryl Wonorahardjo, who spent nearly a decade cutting his teeth in Melbourne’s hyper-competitive restaurant scene before returning home to take the reins at Potato Head in Bali.

“Our dishes are not presented in the same way as they are in villages and we only use premium cuts of meat and fish. But we use the same cooking techniques and the same ingredients to create the same flavours.”

Much of the menu at Kaum was created by former Potato Head group culinary director Wayan Kresna Yasa, who until a year ago oversaw Kaum restaurants in Bali, Singapore, Jakarta and Hong Kong.

Today he runs Home by Chef Wayan, a little restaurant with a rustic driftwood motif in Pererenan, a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood on Bali’s southwest coast.

Yasa grew up on Nusa Penida, a once impoverished satellite island of Bali, where until recently the only way to survive was by fishing or farming seaweed. The only protein available came from the sea and was used to make staples such as ledok nusa.

“I love ledok. I grew up eating it,” Yasa says. “It’s a porridge traditionally made from cassava, sweetcorn and whatever seafood the cook could get their hands on.

“In my interpretation, I turned it into a risotto and added herbs like lemon basil. I believe I’m the first chef to have elevated ledok to restaurant level.”

Over a 10-course degustation, I eat recipes from Nusa Penida and other parts of Indonesia based on chicken, duck and fish. But the dish that knocks my socks off in terms of flavour and presentation is terong bakar – charred aubergine served in lodeh, a slow-simmering coconut sauce.

“I was one of the chefs who cooked at the G20 dinner in Bali last year for the world’s heads of state,” Yasa says. “We invented this dish at the request of the first lady of Indonesia, Iriana Joko Widodo, who asked us to cook a vegan dish for the event, and for that we chose aubergine.

“There are so many ways we cook aubergine in Indonesia but most of them use MSG, and as a vegan dish we couldn’t use any off-the-shelf seasoning that could contain animal products. After a month of brainstorming, we decided to use a slow-simmering spice sauce based on an old recipe from Java.”

‘Food is an offering’: the real cuisine of Bali explained

Yasa’s food is off the bell curve, but modern Indonesian cuisine is not an easy sell in Bali, he says. “The biggest challenge is trying to explain it to foreigners because the best dishes are things they have never seen or heard of before. They prefer to order things they already know, like nasi goreng.

“Even Indonesian people aren’t used to modern Indonesian cuisine. They think it’s street food and because my restaurant looks quite humble, it perpetuates the misconception,” he says.

“The only way to solve it is through storytelling, by telling customers the history of each dish and how all our ingredients are fresh and every dish is prepared à la carte.”

Scanning Instagram to kill time, I come across a post for a new modern Indonesian restaurant with a colourful backstory on the same street in Canggu.

Mil’s Kitchen is the second instalment of the eponymously named restaurant of chef Mili Hendratno, who worked in five-star hotels at home and abroad for two decades until the pandemic left him jobless and living with his family in a small town house in Yogyakarta.

With no other way to make ends meet, Hendratno opened a small pop-up restaurant in his home (“my daughter’s bedroom was the VIP dining room. Everyone else ate in our living room,” he recalls) that specialised in Western staples cooked with Indonesian flavours, such as a sate burger marinated in sweet soy with charred pineapple and peanut aioli.

The twist proved popular and Mil’s Kitchen went viral, amassing more than 20,000 followers on Instagram – much to the consternation of Hendratno’s neighbours, who were understandably concerned about social distancing and forced the restaurant to close.

Next, Hendratno rented a small shopfront with no seating capacity where customers bought takeaway or ate on the street until he found a more suitable venue in a three-bedroom house in Yogyakarta that seats 80 people.

The decor at the Bali chapter of Mil’s Kitchen is a far cry from the brand’s humble beginnings. With white Georgian pillars and neon-blue reflective pools, it looks like the home of a drug lord in Miami Vice. And I don’t get the main courses – dishes such as seafood pasta and chicken breast and mash with hints of local spice that taste fine but are neither modern nor Indonesian.

That all changes when I hit the dessert menu and order cendol panna cotta, which marries the iconic Italian confectionery with es cendol, a much-loved Indonesian street food made from shaved ice, pandan leaves, rice flour and coconut milk.

I also try the jasuke, the corn cheese­cake that Hendratno says was inspired by the corn on the cob with condensed milk and grated cheese that is sold on thousands of street corners around Indonesia.

Instead of condensed milk, the cheesecake is topped with corn ice cream and drizzled with dulce de leche. It is delicious, creative and unlike any cheesecake I have had before.

“Street foods make a great starting point for new recipes because they remind us of our families and childhood, and because they’re all about storytelling,” Hendratno says. “Did you know ‘cendol’ means ‘chill out’ in slang?”

As if on cue, a durian dessert is bused to a British couple at the neighbouring table. Their conversation, which I cannot help but overhear, tells me everything I need to know about the divisive dish.

“It smells terrible. I feel like gagging,” the woman says.

“I don’t know,” her partner replies, shovelling another spoon into his mouth. “I kind of like it.”