The best chicken shop in Bali

Kaiju means “strange beast” in Japanese, a throwback to the post-war film genre in which giant creatures like Godzilla stomped across the screen.

It’s also the name of a new restaurant in Bali. A cross between an Izakaya Japanese restaurant and a neighbourhood chicken shop, Kaiju has a strange philosophy: the kitchen uses every cut from the bird, from familiar chicken breasts to lesser-known parts like the ribs. The approach allows diners to experience the flavour and texture of 22 different pieces — a minimalist, almost surgical exploration of the world’s most consumed meat. The chooks are free-range, sourced from a farm in Bedugul in Bali’s central highlands. Each piece is cooked over binchotan charcoal — which has a low burning temperature and emits little smoke — and grilled on a wooden skewer. With only 22 seats, every customer at Kauju is celebrated, and, if you sit at the bar as I did, entertained by Leo, one of the co-owners. The decor is Japanese, minimalist, a clean space with clean lines, and it only takes minutes to get your food: essentially Asian street food with a zero tacked on to the end of the bill. I started with the “familiar” section of the menu — chicken tenders, served on an oblong-shaped clay plate, with a bowl of rice and cubes of sweet potato. The flavour was particularly sharp, glazed with a continuously ageing house “tare”. Tare, if you don’t know, is a Japanese marinade made from a reduction of soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar that gives a sweet-and-sour flavour. I skipped the section of the menu that uses parts of the bird most restaurants throw away: the heart, gizzard, intestines and oysters. Instead, I turned to the “rare finds” section and ordered a chicken wing skin skewer. The flavour was intense but the portion was tiny, maybe a teaspoon of protein despite the fact six wings went into making it, along with a commensurate amount of time in the kitchen.