DAWN and DUSK

Cooked breakfast runs 6am to 2pm. The Dawn Big Breakfast does everything you’d expect of a proper breakfast — eggs your way, bacon, chorizo, blistered tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, potato rosti, sourdough. The Balinese Benedict puts poached eggs and hollandaise on a homemade English muffin with wilted spinach and either bacon or smoked salmon. The Chilli Scramble is the menu’s local turn with scrambled eggs, peanut chilli crunch, feta, pickled red onion, coriander. Avocado on multigrain sourdough comes with whipped feta and macadamia dukkah. Eggs on toast; scrambled, poached, or fried, with tomato kasundi if you’d rather keep it simple. For lighter mornings, a dragon bowl with dragon fruit, granola, seasonal fruit, and honey. Hotcakes for kids. A short list of sides: bacon, chorizo, smoked salmon, rosti, mushrooms, tomato, extra egg.

There’s no wrong time to eat a pie. Twelve-hour braised beef cheek and cheddar. Chicken, leek and bacon in crème fraîche. Mince beef and cheese. Creamy leek and mushroom. Pork, apple and fennel sausage rolls. Spinach, feta and pine nut. Chicken, bacon and cranberry. Made daily, in-house, the kind of pie you inhale post-surf without taking a breath. Pastries run all day. Plain croissants, almond croissants, pain au chocolat, cinnamon danish, dark chocolate and sea salt madeleines, dark chocolate walnut brownie, mini lemon tart, choc chip and Anzac cookies, Bali banana bread.

Coffee comes first, it’s the reason most people walk in. Beans are sourced ethically from growers on Bali and Java. Espresso, double espresso, macchiato, piccolo, americano, flat white, latte, cappuccino, mocaccino, pistachio latte, all hot or iced, with alt milks available. Decaf for whoever needs it. Tea properly made: English breakfast, Earl Grey, jasmine, chamomile, chai, golden latte, matcha latte, chocolate chaga. Juices pressed that morning. Beet and ginger. Pink dragon and lime. Kelapa muda, young coconut, from the bottle or straight from the nut. Smoothies built around cacao, dragon fruit, mango, banana — with whey if you want it. Nutmylks. Small shots for whoever needs them. In the afternoon, the menu opens up with drinks: Heineken, San Miguel Light, Island Brewing pilsner and pale ale, Black Sand Brewery lager and Kölsch, Everyday Weekend seltzers. A Dawn Aperol Spritz on tap for the late-afternoon crowd.

The cafe faces east which means the outside dining area is dappled with light for the early hours, the heat moving off it by mid-morning. There’s inside seating for those that need respite from the sun. Consciously constructed furniture made for relaxed grazing combines sustainability with comfort and aesthetics. Step down towards the sand for beachside bar leaners and bench seating sheltered by a giant Banyan tree.
Above sits the Sundeck with the sauna and cold plunge just a short walk through the trees. Most mornings the same people who order the second coffee have just come from the cold plunge, or are about to go in. We didn’t plan it that way, but it works.

The Dawn menu reaches the Sundeck on the same delivery route. Slow right down and let your body recalibrate. If ice baths and saunas aren’t your thing simply sip a coconut, lap up the Bali sun and gaze out to the Bali straight. The boats you see rocking in the bay are local jukungs, mostly, fishing the channel before the wind turns. By the time the deck has filled, the morning’s catch is on its way back in.

Dawn opens at 6am and runs to 6pm, daily. Cooked breakfast 6am to 2pm; pie cabinet, pastries, salads, coffee, and drinks through to close. Walk-in only. Open to staying guests and to non-guests. From the Beach House, a few minutes down the cliff staircase. From the Sundeck, the same path. From the boat jetty at Jungut Batu, follow the boardwalk south along the cliff and drop down to Song Lambung. If you’ve found Dusk, you’re already there — Dusk is the upper level of the same building.

Surf club, but make it gourmet. Seafood is the heart of it. Captain Kuniya’s Coconut Ceviche uses fish brought in that morning by Kuniya, who runs his jukung off Coconut Beach. The fish goes from his line to a coconut-lime dressing with crispy sweet potato chips. Alongside it: soy-poached yellowfin tuna with smashed cucumber and crispy chilli; crispy-skinned butterfish with sambal matah and Thai green coconut sauce; sustainably caught BBQ king prawns with garlic chilli butter. We never use farmed fish.

For larger plates: confit pork belly with chilli caramel and miso butternut; parmesan and panko schnitzel with house béarnaise; Australian tenderloin with mushroom ravioli and a blue cheese soufflé; Black Angus ribeye with potato-parmesan rösti and charred leeks. Vegetarian plates aren’t an afterthought — Balinese pumpkin and sweet potato curry with coconut broth and jasmine rice, eggplant parmigiana with Italian parmesan, sweet potato gyoza with sesame soy.

The kitchen runs Australian, New Zealand, and Southeast Asian, sometimes in the same dish. Sambal matah on the table. Bread baked downstairs in the morning. House-baked sourdough, halloumi from Bali, dukkah on the mango and smoked snapper salad.

The cocktail list leans Indonesian on the signatures — the Yuzu Desa with house ginger syrup and Kintamani orange, the Kintamani Orange Ember Mule, the Pandan Coconut Nebula with house pandan syrup. Classics if you’d rather. The wine list runs new-world heavy from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and with European reds and a champagne section that means it.