Mosaic, Metis and other reputed Balinese restaurant might sell food of international standards; their diners might be local and international celebrities, ministers, singers and football players, but by Balinese standards, believe me, those restaurants are banal. They serve food to humans.
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To the Balinese indeed, the best food is not sold to humans, it is instead offered to the Gods. Forget the Balinese lawar, sambal Bali spices and babi guling (suckling pig) - the best of the best in the island, is not for you or me, but for visitors from the invisible world: gods and ancestors; as for the “worst” of the worse, put on the ground, it is symbolically “eaten” by the buta (earthly, “demonic” forces).
All this is not because humans are less demanding than Gods, but simply because they cannot be separated from their two partners. Each occupies its own “department” in a tripartite world – Bhur/Bhwah/Swah. And each accordingly must get his/her own share of attention — including his/her own “eating” quarter.
Thus the restaurant is indeed the eating place for humans, but if you pay attention, you will notice that each restaurant has in its kaja kangin (eastward-mountainward) corner a small plankiran shrine in which offerings are addressed to deities. Because it would be improper for humans to eat there while neglecting their duties toward deities. Similarly, the owner of the restaurant, if Balinese, will never forget to put small jotan offerings on the ground as food for the earthly forces.
But the best food to the Gods is usually provided in the God's restaurants: temples. Welcoming them during temple festivals is, like humans, providing them with the best food and the best dances. This food is is commonly called offerings.
The most fantastic is the Sarad cake, symbolizing the world: The “Sarad” is made of glucous rice coloured with natural dyes. Its components may change, but its basic structure and symbolism remains constant. It represents the abode of the Gods, the Meru. This Meru is that of the mythical times of the churning of the Milken Ocean, when Gods and demons, each pulling at one extremity of the cosmic dragon, used here as a rope, churned the mountain standing in the middle of the sea of milk. From that churning sprouted the elixir of immortality. In the cake, one always can see, supporting the “mountain” and its Gods, the cosmic tortoise, Bedawang Nala, entwined by the dragons and waiting to be churned by them. Above them are usually the three Gods of the Hindu Trinity: Brahma is red; Wisnu is black and Iswara is yellow.
Then is Bhoma, Wisnu’s son from his rape of the earth goddess Pertiwi and symbol of the vegetation; above Bhoma is often the Garuda bird, which killed the dragons and found the elixir of immortality. Above the Garuda is the goose, an animal which feeds in the mud, and is able to separate food from waste. At the uppermost level are Sanghyang Tunggal “the One God” Himself and the Ultimate Atintya. Sometimes, the Meru is made not from glutous rice, but shaped from pork kebabs and meat. Beware, though, even the pork is not edible.
Yet, in temples, humans get food as well: offerings. These are first taken - usually by women and sometimes in procession - to the temple for a night or a few hours, during which they are symbolically blessed by the presence of the visiting Gods and ancestors to which they are addressed. It is after they are taken back home that they may be shared by family members and friends – albeit never friends from a higher caste.
The most fantastic of those food offerings are the “gebogans” – immortalised, time and again, by photographs representing a long, colorful line of women, dressed in their best apparel, looking straight ahead, uptight, each carrying a big offering of fruits and cakes. As all offerings, the gebogans are laden with symbolism. Their shape, long and “conical” with a round top, evokes the phallic symbol of Siwa, as well as the related cosmic mountain. But their components too – fruits, cake, flowers, meat – are each related to gods and cosmic functions. More: on top of the gebogan itself are other offerings that also carry each a cosmic signification: a round-shaped sampiang, symbol of the pangider-ider (Balinese “rose of the wind”) ; and above the sampian, a small canang offering, a symbol, by its colors, of the rose of the wind too, and, by its porosan (heart), of the Trimurti (Gods) Brahma, Wisnu, Iswara.All this, and more, is probably why Balinese food is undoubtedly the most fantastic in the world. If it is not rated five star, it is not the Balinese’s fault. It is because some Westerners don’t understand anything about symbols, or know that Gods, ancestors and even demons have to be fed, and thus respected. And never photographed.
Visitors should know that whatever you may have heard from your friends, and whatever you may read in this magazine, the food you eat in restaurants in Bali, even in many so - called ‘Balinese’ restaurants, is almost NEVER Balinese.
Nasi goreng is not Balinese, nor is mie goreng. What you deem ‘Balinese’ is generally Javanese, or Chinese, and the “great local food” you eat in restaurants is never local. It is adapted to be softer to the tourist’s tastes. It is a sign of the day. Balinese culture, down to its food – not to mention its arts and music – is more and more tailored to suit tourist's expectations; the iconic expectations of a pristine, yet modern Bali. Ponder this over, that there is still, in the villages of Bali, another surviving logic, one that still gives the priority to gods and ancestors.
http://www.nowbali.co.id/culture-sep10/
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