Will Meyrick: Beyond Bali

For more than two decades, Will Meyrick has followed flavour across Asia, travelling through bustling markets, roadside warungs, remote villages and family kitchens. He has transformed those discoveries into some of Indonesia’s most celebrated dining experiences.

His restaurants, including Mama San, Hujan Locale, Honey & Smoke, Billy Ho and Buzo, have helped shape the way visitors experience Bali through food.

When everAFTER last sat down with Will, we explored the stories, people and places behind his unmistakable approach to cooking. A year later, our conversation turns to what comes next.

As Bali continues to evolve and neighbouring Lombok emerges as one of Indonesia’s most exciting destinations, Will is once again looking beyond the familiar. We caught up with him to discuss the places inspiring him now, the changing face of Bali’s dining scene, why Lombok deserves a place on your 2027 travel list, and where he believes Indonesian cuisine is heading next.

For travellers who believe the best way to understand a destination is through its food, consider this your invitation to pull up a chair.

1. What makes Lombok so exciting right now, and why should travellers have it on their radar for 2027?

There is a real energy building in Lombok at the moment. More European travellers are finding their way there, and it is creating something close to the atmosphere Bali had when its tourism boom first took off in the late 1990s. There is that same sense of a place on the cusp, before it has been fully mapped out and packaged.

Lombok has a harsher edge than Bali ever did, even back then. It takes real time to understand, and I think that puts some people off. Instead, it attracts a different kind of traveller: people with a genuine love for Indonesia as a whole, rather than what I would call “lipstick tourism”, which is honestly where a lot of Bali sits right now.

That is exactly why Lombok belongs on the radar for 2027. It rewards travellers who want the real thing, not the easy version.

2. What will Bali-savvy travellers find in Lombok that feels distinctly different, whether in its landscapes, communities, food or pace of life?

The first thing you notice is that nothing is arranged for you. Bali has, in the nicest possible way, learned to stage itself: the rice terrace with the swing, the temple gate at golden hour.

Lombok’s beauty is unstaged. The rice terraces are simply rice terraces. The Sasak villages are not cultural performances; they are villages.

That takes some adjustment if you have come from Bali expecting everything to reveal itself easily. Once you slow down to Lombok’s pace, however, you realise that its honesty is the whole point. Nothing is trying to sell itself to you, which is rare anywhere in the world now, let alone just across the water from Bali.

3. How would you describe Lombok’s food culture, and what should every traveller try?

It is Sasak food at its core, built by people who work the land and sea hard, so it does not hold back to be polite. Where Bali leans towards sweetness, Lombok leans towards heat. The cuisine is built around chilli, lime and freshness rather than sugar and layers of flavour.

Ayam Taliwang is the obvious starting point. It is grilled chicken marinated in chilli, garlic, shrimp paste and tamarind. Originally from Taliwang village near Mataram, it is now found everywhere, with every warung offering its own version.

You eat it with plecing kangkung, water spinach served with a raw tomato and shrimp paste sambal. It cools nothing, and it is not meant to. It simply gives the chicken something to sit against.

From there, the cuisine opens up quickly. Sate rembiga, a beef satay from a village near Mataram, balances sweetness with real heat. It often surprises people who think Indonesian satay always means peanut sauce. It does not here.

Beberuk terong is a raw eggplant sambal salad that demonstrates how much Sasak cooking relies on freshness rather than slowly cooking ingredients down. Sate pusut is a minced, spiced satay pressed onto the skewer rather than threaded, and it is worth seeking out. Nasi balap puyung, a fiery rice dish from Puyung village, tells you that Lombok’s food is not trying to be exported or softened. It is made for the people who live there.

Seafood is the other pillar. It comes straight off the boats along the coast and is cooked simply because it does not need much done to it.

I would say the same thing about the food that I would say about the island itself: do not expect it to soften for you. It can be confronting at first, but it is better for it once you allow it to be what it is.

4. What do your Bali restaurants reveal about your approach to food, and how have they evolved?

They are different rooms guided by the same instinct: take the region’s techniques seriously and do not dumb them down.

Mama San is pan-Asian and deeply informed by street food. Hujan Locale goes further into regional Indonesian cooking. Honey & Smoke is Southern European, centred on live fire and the discipline that comes with it.

Billy Ho is where Japanese and Chinese sensibilities meet. Izakaya classics sit alongside Chinese dim sum, bringing two very different traditions of small, precise plates to the same table.

Buzo is itameshi, a modern izakaya where Japanese and Italian cooking reinterpret one another. It is a pairing that makes more sense with every taste.

What has evolved over the years is not the philosophy. It is our confidence in trusting guests with more complexity than we once did.

5. Where do you personally choose to eat in Bali? Are there any warungs or local dishes you keep returning to?

The unpretentious places, always. There are a handful I keep returning to, no matter how many new restaurants open around them.

Pak Malen in Seminyak: The babi guling everyone eventually finds their way to, with crispy skin and rich, red-spiced fried pork on the side.

Ibu Oka in Ubud: The original, and the one Bourdain helped put on the map. It still earns its reputation every time.

Warung Wardani in Denpasar: A buffet-style nasi campur spread made fresh each morning and usually gone by early afternoon. There might be rendang, jackfruit curry, urap or whatever else is in the cabinet that day.

Warung Murah in Seminyak: The name literally means “cheap warung”. It has been a neighbourhood institution for decades, with plastic tables and no fuss.

Pande Egi in Gianyar: Babi guling with a view across the rice fields. It is worth the drive on the way to or from Ubud.

I judge a nasi campur stall by how its sambal shifts slightly from day to day. That tells you more about a cook’s instincts than any menu description could.

6. Are there any ingredients or regional dishes that have recently surprised or inspired you?

Fermented and cured meats, particularly the ones I keep encountering in Thai cuisine. Sai krok Isan and naem have that sour, funky cured-sausage character that northeastern Thailand does so well.

It is a different fermentation tradition from what you find in Indonesia, and it has made me look more closely at what we are not doing enough of here.

Homemade fish sauce is another source of inspiration. Proper small-batch versions have a depth that commercial products simply cannot match. The flavour you get from something that has been left to develop naturally over several months is completely different.

7. What does genuinely responsible dining look like to you in 2026?

Mostly, it is unglamorous. It means knowing your fisherman’s name, not simply knowing his certification. It means allowing the menu to change because the harvest changed, not because a trend did. It means paying farmers fairly and consistently.

Real sustainability is about regeneration. Organic produce can be expensive and is not always commercially viable for restaurants, but paying producers properly and building lasting relationships with them is where meaningful change begins.

8. Can restaurants now influence where people choose to holiday as much as a hotel or resort?

Increasingly, yes. I see people building trips around three or four restaurant bookings in the same way they once built them around a hotel pool.

Food has become part of the story travellers tell themselves about why they went somewhere.

9. What would the ultimate three-day culinary journey through Bali look like for honeymooners, from breakfast to a romantic dinner?

Start simply, with a warung breakfast and nothing too precious, to set an honest tone for the trip.

From there, I would suggest booking one of our street food tours. It is the fastest way to understand how Balinese people actually eat, rather than guessing your way through a menu. If there is time, the North Bali tour is even better. It takes you out of the south entirely and reveals a side of the island that most honeymooners never see.

Build the evenings around contrast. Spend one night somewhere with live-fire energy, another in a lively pan-Asian setting, and the final night somewhere quiet and produce-led, with a table designed for conversation rather than spectacle.

The rhythm should mirror a relationship: playful at the beginning and more considered by the end.

10. Are we chasing the “viral” dish rather than the authentic experience?

Yes, more than people admit. A dish goes viral because it photographs well, not necessarily because it represents anything.

I have watched warungs reshape their entire identity around one dish that took off online, at the expense of the other twenty dishes that actually told the region’s story.

11. Which Indonesian recipe, ingredient or technique deserves far greater international recognition?

Rempah, the wet spice paste that underpins so much Indonesian cooking.

It deserves the same international recognition as curry paste. It is technically demanding, regionally distinct and the true engine of the flavour, yet most people outside Indonesia have never heard the word.

12. What still excites you creatively? Is there a restaurant or dining experience you have not created yet but would love to?

There is a concept I keep circling back to that I have not built yet. I would call it Curry Traders, bringing southern India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia together at one table.

Those three food cultures have exchanged spices and techniques for centuries, but you rarely see anyone place them side by side and allow the connections to emerge. They share ingredients such as curry leaves, tamarind, coconut and mustard seeds, yet each region takes them somewhere completely different.

That is the kind of restaurant I would love to open next.

13. Where do you see Indonesian cuisine on the world stage by 2027? Is its biggest moment still to come?

I think it is still ahead.

Thai and Vietnamese food had their global moments decades ago. Indonesia’s moment has been delayed partly because its diversity is so vast that it resists a single narrative. Seventeen thousand islands cannot easily be reduced to one signature dish.

Diners abroad are becoming more patient with complexity, and that is exactly the kind of patience Indonesian cuisine rewards.

Final question: If someone left Indonesia remembering just one meal, not because of its expense or extravagance but because it changed how they thought about food, what would you hope that meal was?

A proper rendang, cooked slowly in the traditional way and never rushed.

Not the version most people abroad know from a jar or a quick weeknight recipe, but the real thing. The coconut milk is reduced over several hours until it is almost caramelised. The spice paste is built in layers. The meat falls apart because it has been given the time it needs, not because it has been forced there.

It is a dish that teaches patience simply by being cooked properly. I think that is the lesson Indonesia has to offer, if you allow it.

Nothing worth remembering here comes quickly.