If you’re a fan of the Vancouver Folk Festival, you’ve probably tasted the Bali House’s dishes
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Chef-owner Anak Agung cooks up a tasty spread. Photograph by : Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun
These days, you’ll find Anak Agung at Bali House in North Vancouver cooking in the kitchen, occasionally popping into the dining room to greet customers with warm smiles and big welcomes.
“I haven’t seen you for a while! I was worried about you!” she cries out when she sees a regular who’s come in with his nephew for dinner.
If you’re a longtime Vancouver International Folk Festival fan, you’ll have seen her at the Bali House food concession for the past 24 years. She has, until recently, been feeding the hungry at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, Mission Folk Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Comox Music Festival and Salmon Arm Blues Festival.
Her food isn’t 100 per cent Indonesian — you’ll find pad Thai as well as the traditional lumpia and satays. It’s food she learned to cook on her own the way she liked it since she came to Canada in 1972 under brutal circumstances. She was part of the royal family, she says, and had never cooked. The “mud and fire” of that period is still too upsetting to talk about.
“I’m okay now. When you are really desperate, you learn really fast. I’m glad I’m here. I’ve learned lots of things.”
She’s certainly making customers happy. A colleague hounded me into trying the place, afraid it wasn’t busy enough because it sits in a traffic Gulag near the Second Narrows Bridge. It’s easy to drive by it but hard to get to. You can only access the lane parking lot from Mountain Highway.
What I liked about Agung’s food is the fresh feel. Whether it’s the vegetables in the gado gado or the cooked veggies in the nasi goreng ayam (chicken fried rice), it has a brightness in flavour and colour. Her house special rice is her own creation, a mix of red, brown and black rices. Sweet and sour prawns feature 11 large prawns, again, nice and fresh.
She uses olive oil and doesn’t use MSG. Other dishes include laksa, rendang sapi (beef simmered in coconut milk with Indonesian spices and garlic) and she’s always got a special or two. Main dishes cost $8 to $10. (She says she’ll still do the Vancouver International Folk Festival. “Every year is my last!” she laughs.)
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BALI HOUSE
1560 Main St. (at Mountain Highway), North Vancouver, 604-988-1300, www.balihouse.ca
© The Vancouver Sun 2007