Steak in Ubud

Where can you eat steak in Ubud?

Kumo is the restaurant inside Riviera Boutique Hotel on Jalan Raya Pengosekan, and it runs two menus out of one dining room. Four seats at the counter take the omakase, where the chef sets every course and nobody orders. The rest of the room is laid for the steak house menu, and the whole room seats thirty, counter included.

Jalan Raya Pengosekan runs south of the Sacred Monkey Forest, a short walk or scooter ride from Ubud Palace and the Ubud Art Market, so it works as a dinner stop from most of central Ubud without booking a driver.

How does the Kumo steak house menu work?

You choose the protein and the price follows it. Everything else comes with the main: a seasonal appetiser, the soup of the day, seasonal vegetables, one carb and one signature sauce. Appetiser, soup and vegetables are the kitchen's call on the day.

Carbs are jasmine white rice, mashed potato, french fries, baked potato, baked sweet potato or sourdough. For the sauce there's chimichurri, demi-glace, mushroom, cowboy butter, dill tzatziki, or peri peri if you want the spicy one.

Which cut of beef should you order?

Every beef plate on the menu is 250gr, so what you're really choosing is the cut and how marbled it is. MB is the marble score, a grade for the fat running through the meat, and a higher number usually means a richer, softer bite.

The lighter end is the AUS Sirloin MB3 croquette at IDR 339,000 and an Indonesian grass-fed fillet mignon at IDR 439,000. A USA premium top blade sits in the middle at IDR 639,000. Then the Australian wagyu: MB5 striploin at IDR 899,000, MB7 tenderloin at IDR 999,000, and the MB9 full blood tenderloin at IDR 1,199,000.

Fillet mignon is cut from the tenderloin, so if that's your cut anyway, the choice between the Indonesian fillet and the two wagyu tenderloins comes down to marbling and what you want to spend. One Google reviewer of Kumo, Sasha Bachmann, singled out the generous portions and said you leave full.

What if you don't eat beef?

Four of the ten mains aren't beef. There's a 300gr salmon steak, middle cut, at IDR 499,000, 300gr of butter shrimp at IDR 379,000 and a 250gr caramelized garlic butter crab at IDR 999,000. The lamb shank is the heaviest plate on the menu at 550gr, IDR 519,000. They come with the same set as the beef.

Anyone at the table who'd rather not choose at all can take a counter seat for the omakase and still eat in the same room. It's sold as four sequences, from the four-moment First Encounter up to the fifteen-moment Kumo Experience.

What do you drink with a steak at Kumo?

Kumo has its own cocktail list, and two of the drinks on it are whiskey-based, which tends to sit well next to red meat. Golden Aged is whiskey, maple, Angostura and house-made orange bitters; the Old Fashioned among the classics is the plainer version of the same idea. Beer is a Small Bintang or a Guinness. Not drinking? There are mocktails, and kombucha in five flavours, peach and lychee among them.

How do you book a steak dinner at Kumo?

Tables are reserved on WhatsApp at +62 811-2891-1122. The room seats 30 and four of those seats belong to the omakase counter, so message ahead rather than walking in, and mention any allergies or foods you avoid when you book.

What else is there to do around dinner?

Kumo shares the grounds with the rest of Riviera. A 60 or 90 minute treatment in the spa and massage room fits in the afternoon before dinner. Afterwards the Riviera Lounge pours wine, and if you're staying over, Riviera's 28 rooms are in the same building, so there's no drive home after the wagyu.