I n the past thirty years or so, the face of Bali has changed dramatically with the growth of tourism. Talk to any Bali veteran and you will nearly always hear the same "you should have seen Bali in nineteen seventy..." stories. This is particularly true in the case of Kuta, Legian and Seminyak which have been transformed from three small, very separate, sleepy fishing villages, into one forever changing, constantly growing, chaotic beach resort and Indonesia’s busiest tourist destination. Businesses have come and gone over the years, but a couple of restaurants in particular have weathered the past three decades to become two of Bali’s longest standing and most legendary eateries. In my quest to ascertain how have they managed not only to survive but also to retain their enormous popularity, I was privileged to be able to be wined and dined by the proprietors of both Made’s Warung and The Swiss Restaurant.

THE SWISS RESTAURANT

In the early seventies Jon P. Zurcher, inspired by a book written by Theo Mayer, left his homeland Switzerland in his car and traveled overland towards Bali. The trip took him a little over two years. Once he had settled here, he stopped off to buy gas one day at a small warung and met and fell in love with a young Balinese woman, Ni Made Suci. It took a couple of years to persuade her and her family that marrying a foreigner was not such a bad idea. By 1977, the happy couple had opened The Swiss Restaurant at its first location on Jl Legian in Kuta; near to where Peanuts is now.

As the years passed they witnessed the amazing growth of Kuta as more restaurants, shops, bars and hotels crowded in around them. In 1990, in an attempt to get away from that hustle and bustle of Kuta, they moved to their present location on Jl Pura Bagus Taruna. Indeed, the crowded, busy scene of Kuta/Legian is not at all in keeping with the character of the Swiss restaurant, which offers a homey atmosphere in which to relax with friends. And as the once quiet Legian becomes increasingly blended with noisy Kuta, Jon and Suci are talking about moving again, this time to Jimbaran, confident that their loyal clientele will find them wherever they are.