Te'Amo

We came to Te'Amo in Canggu to celebrate a friend's big milestone, and the Margherita rose to the occasion — at least visually. It arrives with a very tall, dramatic crust and huge basil leaves, and then comes the show: they cut the pizza with scissors at the table and grate fresh parmesan over the top. That's a first for me in Bali, and it's a charming bit of theatre.

Underneath the presentation, the fundamentals are solid. The pizza is beautifully cooked, the sauce is nice, and there's a good amount of cheese. It lands piping hot — hot enough that my first bite caught me out.

A few things hold it back. There's a lot of very coarse polenta on the base, which I never love. The mountain of basil brings a slightly aniseed note and tends to slide off rather than settle in. And the fresh parmesan, as fancy as it looks, ends up being too much and too salty — with better-quality cheese and basil, this pizza would be a different story.

It's a big statement of a pizza that eats more average than it looks. Still very enjoyable, and between the scissors and the setting, a fun stop in Canggu.