Just Desserts

Once vital to New York’s avant-garde dessert scene, chef Will Goldfarb stepped away from the spotlight and moved to Bali five years ago, where he could reboot his career without the scrutiny that comes along with NYC celebrity status. His newly completed kitchen-laboratory is located in Seminyak, on the southern coast of Bali, where he acquired and moved high-tech machinery into an isolated, modernist glass box. After three years of planning, Goldfarb unveiled Mejekawi– which means sacred table- last May, both a lab and 24-seat restaurant at Ku De Ta’s new second level restaurant overlooking the famous beach club’s courtyard and oceanfront. Creating some of the most experimental, delectable dishes in the world, he uses ingredients that don’t exist anywhere else. Goldfarb presents savory dishes such as pandabert- a panna cotta made with the pandan leaf; snake-fruit tatin puree and slices of poached nutmeg; and fruit balinese dumplings with beet yogurt and pumpkin seed oil powder. Five days a week, he experiments with new dishes and techniques that has put this dessert laboratory on the global foodie map.

Goldfarb is a native New Yorker who earned a pastry degree at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, as well as a stint at the famed El Bulli in Spain. In 2005, he opened Room 4 Dessert in NYC to showcase his talents at a long wooden bar where super-chefs David Chang and Thomas Keller were fans, along with curious eaters who wanted to see why a pastry chef had landed center stage. There, Goldfarb created elaborate desserts that reflected his aptitude for science as well as his commitment to the whimsy, precision and innovation essential to his craft. When the restaurant folded in 2007 after a fall out with his partners, Goldfarb later revisited his dream of relocating to Indonesia, a place he- along with his wife and young child- wanted to live. After a health issue temporarily sidelined him, the move was finally realized along with Mejekawi, where he plays mad scientist in the most gourmand way. www.kudeta.net