Seasalt: Upscale seafood restaurant in Seminyak

I have just returned from a 2-week vacation in Bali and Singapore! It hasn’t been that long since I just finished writing all the recaps and reviews from my Hawaii trip in October, but here I am with more recommendations and posts for everything we did and where we ate in Bali and Singapore.

First on the list – Seasalt, a seafood restaurant located in Seminyak, Bali. For Bali, Seasalt is quite expensive since you can get yourself a meal for as low as $2 CAD (but you may get diarrhea 🙃 ). But I ate here as a table of 4 adults, expecting to have a really nice and kind of fancy dinner on our first full day in Bali.

---

Interior

Seasalt is located in Alila, which is a beach resort/hotel and you know restaurants are always fancy when they are connected to an upscale hotel. The interior is basically a big indoor/outdoor space that sits on the beach and gives you really great views of the ocean/beach.

We came here for dinner after the sunset, so actually the view we got was pitch black 😂 but it was nice to sit on the patio and feel a little breeze and hear the sound of the waves crashing in the background. We actually walked to Seasalt from Potato Head Beach Club, which is literally right next door. We walked across the beach, which was really nice and convenient. There are some stairs and a little spot where you can wash the sand off your feet before you go in, and then you are at Seasalt.

Interior style is very modern, open kitchen concept, accents of turqoise and blue. Warm lighting and lots of foreigners were eating here. Our table was spacious with ample room for many dishes and comfortable booth seating and chairs.

---

Food review

Here is everything we shared and ate between 4 adults at Seasalt. We also purchased fancy bottled water for $5. Note that all prices have been rounded and converted into CAD.

Bread (complimentary)

They start us off with this complimentary bread (I love me some free bread!), which looks really good. But the most interesting part is this tray of black/grey salt it comes with. The server basically cracks open some sort of rock/lump looking thing and digs out 2 pieces of butter that is wrapped in some sort of seaweed. Really fun but kinda dramatic butter scene and in the end all I can say is that it tastes like a good loaf of bread with some fancy butter.

Ruby snapper tartare ($18)

On the appetizer list, we have a nicely styled plate of snapper tartare. The sauce is a carrot-orange reduction, and it is paired with cucumber, pomelo, crispy rice puffs and gari ginger. It tastes refreshing and is a nice light way to start your meal.

Nouvelle Hokkaido scallop ($26)

Next, we have some scallops, which looks a lot like the salad we ordered because the scallops are hidden under a bowl of wakame salad with tomatoes and a yellow smoked cream. They also have some grape caviar in there. Sharing this with 4 people means we basically each get one scallop, and it was good one-biter with caviar, but most of this dish is salad.

Midori hummus ($14)

Here is our hummus salad, which looks a lot like the scallop appetizer. It is actually a pretty good salad with edamame, broccoli, avocado and purple lettuce underneath. I like the hummus/sauce they use here.

Clam soup ($14)

We also order both soups, which both come in pretty small bowls. First is the clam soup with some organic tofu, pickled mushrooms, and daikon. But I am pleased to say most of it is clams. The broth is light but not fishy, a very “clean” taste.

Coconut prawn soup ($14)

I preferred the coconut prawn soup more, which had a bit of a sweet flavour due to the coconut mmilk. It was more like a curry actually, and you can pair it with some crispy rice (I believe the rice came from a different dish though). This soup also has mushrooms, tomato and a few dashes of pickled chili oil.

Ocean Bali platter ($53)

Lastly for our appetizers, we order a big ocean platter, which comes with the fish of the day, prawns, flower crab, octopus, corn and sambals. The platter is quite large and they actually give you a whole fish so there is a lot of food packed on this plate.

I personally liked the prawns as they were huge, but it was difficult for me to eat the crab meat as it was not de-shelled. I don’t remember what the fish of the day was but we couldn’t finish this platter.

I actually found this platter to be underwhelming. The presentation is ok (everything is just piled on there), but the fish meat itself tasted just average to me. For $53, the portion of food might be worth it but for the taste and what Seasalt looks like as a restaurant, I thought it would taste better.

Sustainable crispy prawns ($24)

Moving onto the mains, we have some crispy prawns here served with prawn crackers, miso butter, wakame and grilled lemon. There are only 3 pieces of prawn so actually I’m not sure if this is a main or an appetizer, but it’s listed under the “seafood” section instead of the “appetizer” section.

I love prawns so I enjoyed this dish – it resembled a prawn tempura. Prawn chips were good but we’ve been eating a lot of prawn chips since they always serve it with nasi goreng in Bali.

Prawn fried rice ($14)

This is actually more of a side, and it is a small bowl of rice topped with free range egg, tobiko, spring onion and mushroom. I actually felt like this bowl of rice was the best thing we ordered because it was super flavourful and had that “wok hay” (fried really well).

Cured miso pompano ($22)

Again, price and portion for a main here seems more like an appetizer, but we order this pompano fish, which is actually coined as the world’s most edible fish (what does that even mean 🧐 ). The serving is 30g but the fish meat is very smooth and flaky, and since it is cured in miso, it tastes similar to one of my favourite dishes, the miso black cod.

Other items on this plate include charred spring onions and sweet potato, which I felt like were strange pairings.

Chocolates (complimentary)

To end the meal, they give us complimentary chocolates, which were a nice sweet one biter.

---

Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 

Overall, we had a good dinner at Seasalt. Service was good and ambiance was really great.

Price is high for Bali but honestly, it’s still not that expensive when you compare it to seafood restaurants in Vancouver. I will say their mains are more like their appetizers, so it was a good thing we were sharing everything.

Out of all the dishes we tried, I would recommend the snapper tartare, coconut prawn soup, hummus salad (I know, who am I?? Recommending a salad), and of course the prawn fried rice. Everything else was just average to me.

Most of the other dishes, although presented quite beautifully, underwhelmed me. I’m not sure if it’s because I had high expectations going in to a fancy restaurant in Bali, but I just felt like they were trying to be fancy and modern and wrap butter in seaweed under salt and put fish on a hipster plate with some random sweet potato, but really some of the things didn’t need to be so “innovative”. I felt like they were trying to make everything fancy but some of them were misses.

Sincerely, Loewe