The Restaurant
Mason occupies a converted residential courtyard at Jalan Pantai Batu Bolong 83C in Canggu, a few hundred metres back from Batu Bolong Beach and one of the most prominent street addresses on the island's most-active dining strip. The dining room is the project of Sydney chef Nathan Sasi - formerly of Nomad and Mercado in Sydney - who has imported a fully integrated chef-driven kitchen discipline to Bali: in-house charcuterie programme, on-premise dry-ageing, an aggressive wood-fired-grill setup at the centre of the open kitchen, and a daily-changing menu built around local Bali produce and eastern-coast seafood. The room runs about ninety covers across an indoor dining floor and a tropical courtyard with a long communal table that has become one of the most-photographed restaurant settings on the island.
The menu's spine is the in-house programme. The charcuterie board - guanciale, coppa, sopressata, all cured on-premise across a multi-week schedule - opens almost every table. The forty-eight-hour beef has become Mason's calling card: a short rib cooked at a low temperature for two full days, finished over the wood-fire grill, served sliced with a charred salsa verde and a small bowl of horseradish-creme. The wood-fired pork loin with brined cabbage, the half-roast Bali chicken with green-chilli rice, and a daily fish preparation (often the local snapper or barramundi from the east coast) handle the rest of the principal courses. Vegetable plates are taken as seriously as the protein programme - the spiced cauliflower with hummus, the wood-fired carrots with carob and goat curd, the bread-and-cultured-butter service. The cheese board after dinner is the most thoughtful on the island.
The wine list is one of the most serious in Bali - around three hundred references with depth in Australian producers (Sasi imports a careful selection through a direct relationship with the Adelaide Hills, the Yarra Valley, and the Margaret River), Burgundy, and Italian small-grower estates. The cocktail bar runs a strong natural-fermentation programme: kefirs, vinegars, and tepache-style ferments built into long drinks served in clay cups. Service is informal-Australian in register - warm, well-trained, with the floor team's product knowledge unusually high for a Bali setting. The room runs an excellent post-dinner amaro service and a small-batch grappa list. For a Canggu dinner that wants real chef-driven cooking without forcing a resort relocation, Mason is the address.
Why This Is Bali’s First Date Pick
For a first date or a quietly serious dinner in Canggu - and the area has become the principal expatriate, creative-economy, and remote-work hub on the island - Mason delivers without forcing the formality of a resort restaurant. The a la carte structure allows shared discovery across the menu. The courtyard table at dusk supplies the kind of warm, lantern-lit setting that Bali first-date evenings reach for. The wine list creates a real bottle conversation. And the room's volume runs convivial rather than hushed, which holds a first date's energy across a longer evening. The bar handles a pre-dinner cocktail cleanly, and the post-dinner walk back down Batu Bolong supplies the natural close to the evening.
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