There’s a wide selection of restaurants, cafes and bars on Gili Trawangan, ranging from expensive beach resorts to tucked-away local eateries known as ‘warungs’. You can eat seafood from stalls at the night market, or sit on a beanbag on the beach drinking cocktails and ordering grilled mahi mahi. There are cafés where you can drink great coffee and work on your laptop, and vegetarians and vegans are also catered for.
There are several Italian pizzerias on the island, as well as a Mexican restaurant, a steak house, burger joints, Turkish kebabs and a hot dog stall. Of course you can enjoy all that here, and we recommend some pizzerias and a Mexican restaurant below. But we think that when you are on your tropical island paradise holiday or honeymoon, you should try out the local specialities, the wonderful Indonesian and Asian food, and of course the fabulous seafood on the beach at sunset or at the celebrated night market.
Fast boat to Gili Trawangan: how to get to Gili Trawangan with Bluewater Express
Here’s a selection of the best restaurants that you can find on Gili Trawangan, recommended by people who ate there.
The night market
Close to the main beach jetty, opposite the private boat harbour, eating at the Gili Trawangan Night Market is a must-have experience. It’s packed with open-air food stalls and traditional warungs, selling grilled and barbecued fish and seafood, as well as Chinese wok dishes, nasi goreng fried rice, deep-fried spring rolls, grilled meats and bakso meatball soup. Some stalls specialize in cakes and desserts, such as chocolate-filled pancakes or sweet potato and banana fritters.
It opens every day just before sunset. The locals light their barbecues and, as the market starts to fill with smoke, set out arrays of fresh fish and seafood, including snapper, barracuda, trevally, lobsters, king prawns, squid, crabs and clams.
The warungs offer the local buffet speciality called ‘nasi campur’, which consists of a plate of rice covered with your selection of toppings from the buffet bar. One of the recommended warungs at the night market is Green Café, which offers wide selection of Indonesian dishes and great sate, as well as sweet cakes. The portions are big and good value for money.
The prices at the night market are low compared to the beach restaurants and resorts. There are lots of party bars all around, so it’s a perfect place to get a bite of traditional Indonesian food after sunset before going for a night out.
Beach restaurants and cocktail bars
La Moomba Bar & Restaurant
This relaxed and friendly place is recommended because it has it all, and by that we mean that you can go snorkeling with turtles from the beach right in front of the restaurant – you can rent snorkeling equipment from here. They have a chair swing over the water where you can have your photo taken. You can eat in little huts overlooking the sea, or padded chairs on the beach, and you can lie on a sunbed drinking cocktails or fruit smoothies.
La Moomba serves both Indonesian and western cuisines all day – breakfast, lunch and dinner. The best time to go snorkeling with turtles is earlier in the day
Casa Vintage Beach
This Caribbean restaurant has a unique vibe, serving traditional spicy Jamaican food such as yellow fish or chicken curry cooked with love. The place has a vintage look and feel from a bygone era, and you can relax in hammocks or on rugs and pillows. It’s a perfect place to watch the sunset.
The Jamaican owners cook all the food, sometimes taking half a day over the spicy beef stew, meaning that you have to reserve your dinner the day before and tell them what you want. There are also vegetarian and vegan options available.
They serve a selection of home-made fruit wines – the banana wine is a must-try, but you can also choose pineapple, dragonfruit and mango wines.
The Pearl Beach Lounge
This lovely relaxed beachfront restaurant is just right for a romantic dinner or a birthday. The sea view is great, the food top-notch, though more expensive than many other places, serving salmon and ribeye steaks, but also unique specialities such as goat tacos. They have a catch of the day in their seafood menu; the mahi mahi is definitely recommended.
Karma Kayak
Found on the northern coast of Gili Trawangan, this resort restaurant is a perfect place to watch the sunset or swim with turtles. They serve great tapas, tacos, salads and burgers, washed down with sangria. Lots of vegetarian and vegan options are available. It’s right on the beach near the famous Turtle Point, and you can go snorkeling from in front of the restaurant.
Seafood restaurants
Wildan Bar & Restaurant
This place is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, on the sunrise side of the island so that you can watch a beautiful sunrise while having breakfast. In the evenings the views, cocktails and ambience make it perfect for a romantic evening. The seafood is good, fresh and relatively inexpensive. We recommend the mixed seafood platter for two.
Desa Dunia Beda Beach Resort
This upmarket resort hotel serves excellent fish and seafood, including a seafood barbecue by the pool with grilled snapper, king prawns, and fish skewers of snapper, prawn and squid, all served with butter garlic sauce.
Drink cocktails and mocktails as the sunset turns to dusk on the beach for a perfect romantic evening.
Natys Restaurant
Right on the beach on two floors, with great views, this restaurant serves huge lobsters with salad and fries, steaks of mahi mahi and tuna, seafood platters, all with lashings of garlic sauce, served with mango juice smoothies and cocktail bowls. The salad bar is unlimited eat-all-you-want. The food is relatively expensive but you get what you pay for.
Warungs
If you visit Bali and the Gili Islands you have to try the warungs. These are traditional eateries run by locals, often family ventures, and the food is much cheaper than at the touristy beach restaurants but really tasty. The warungs serve traditional Indonesian food such as nasi goring, nasi campur, smoked fish in chilli sauce, beef rendang, and other local Indonesian specialities.
Warung Sasak
This restaurant on two floors down an alleyway away from the main drag serves local sasak cuisine. The food is spicy, tasty and inexpensive, with vegetarian options. You can choose the traditional buffet of nasi campur, a plate of rice with toppings of your choice,
Warung Jaman Now
This warung has some of the lowest prices on Gili Trawangan, but the food is super tasty and vegetarian-friendly as well as suitable for meat-eaters. It’s a downmarket rather cheap-looking place, but with great service, a nice friendly owner, and traditional local dishes such as beef rendang, ayam penyet, nasi lemak, and nasi goreng with tofu and tempeh served with peanut sauce, as well as vegetable spring rolls and chicken satay.
Takeaway is also available.
Intan Inn Resto
Set back a bit away from the beach and off the main road you could easily miss this little restaurant, but it’s worth looking for. They serve traditional local food, and to help you with it there are blackboards with English-Indonesian translations and common Indonesian words and phrases to use.
The food is tasty, well presented, and made with love. The staff are friendly and helpful. Order local food and you can have some complimentary tea. The beer is cold and there is wi-fi if you want to work.
Warung Dewi
This traditional family-run restaurant hidden behind a vegetable market is vegetarian friendly, specialising in curries and stews. As well as dishes made with local vegetables from the market, you can try pumpkin curry, jackfruit curry, bean salad, corn fritters, potato patties, and curries of tofu and tempe topped with peanuts and grated coconut – or you can have the nasi campur option available at all the warungs, a plate of rice with selected toppings of your choice.
The food is completely fresh. The prices are really low. The chilli dishes are really hot!
Wajan café
The sister restaurant to the Warung Jaman Now, and owned by the same people, this warung is slightly more expensive than some and offers Thai and Indian food as well as Indonesian, washed down with cocktails.
Asian Food
Jali Kitchen
This Asian fusion restaurant in beautiful surroundings offers a variety of both Asian and western cuisine – Thai, Vietnamese and Indian food as well as Indonesian. It’s vegetarian friendly, and you can eat mushroom ravioli in creamy beetroot sauce as well as tofu pad Thai. Drinks include coconut smoothies and a wide range of juices, and for dessert there’s heavenly lime cheesecake. The service is exceptional – you can have the food delivered to your villa if they’re not too busy.
Fan Chinese Food
This tiny little restaurant is run by a woman who makes and cooks all your food to order in front of you – including making noodles and dumplings to order. It’s all completely fresh, authentic and wonderfully tasty. Try the spicy hotpot. The interior is cozy and homely, the kitchen is open so you can see it all happening. Possibly the best Chinese food in south-east Asia!
Cafés
Coffee & Thyme
This intimate café began life on Gili Air near the pier, and became really popular, so they opened another one on Gili Trawangan. It’s found in front of a dive school, so it’s a perfect place to have breakfast before a day exploring the amazing dive sites of Gili Trawangan.
(Read the main article on diving in the Gili Islands here.)
Coffee and Thyme serve their breakfast menu all day, so you can have that breakfast whenever you want, and the wi-fi connection allows you to work as well. The coffee is wonderful, and so is the service; they serve crème brûlée coffee and iced caramel latte with freshly-baked cakes. The menu is vegetarian-friendly, so you can try the tofu scramble or the vegan taliwang sandwich, and either the vegetarian or the vegan pesto pasta, and if you don’t want coffee you can have fresh orange juice or iced green tea.
La Boulangerie
This French bakery and patisserie will give you an authentic taste of France while overlooking the beautiful turquoise water from the first floor dining area.
French croissants, baguettes, quiches and pain au chocolate are served with delicious coffee – try the smoked beef and mozzarella croissant or the freshly baked brownies.
Pizza
Regina Pizzeria
The chef is Italian, and the pizzas really are authentic, baked in traditional wood-fire ovens. Some people say that these are the best pizzas in Asia – they certainly are among the biggest, as are the focaccia portions. The service is great, the atmosphere is cozy and fun, and the prices are very reasonable. Other Italian food is available, not just pizza – try the beef ravioli with a rich beef sauce. Drink cocktails by candlelight in the evening.
Francesco’s Pizza
Found in the main central area by the night market, this relaxed and friendly Italian-owned pizzeria offers large portions of authentic Italian pizza, lasagna and gnocchi served with great salads, and vegetarian options such as spinach risotto. Their speciality is thick and sweet milkshakes – try the vanilla mango one.
Cool Cafe Restaurant
Set a little back from the main street, this pizzeria is really cozy and welcoming, playing chilled-out music. The food is fresh and the staff are friendly; the pizzas are authentic and cooked in a traditional wood oven. Try the calzone.
Mexican
Tiki Grove
This cozy thatched torch-lit Canadian-owned Mexican taco restaurant has a great chilled-out atmosphere. The service and the music are great, but what you come for are the spicy tacos, made with fresh ingredients, washed down with cold beers and inventive cocktails, served by friendly and attentive staff. Try the Jamaican fish tacos, jerk chicken tacos and the sharkbait cocktail.
Vegetarian and Vegan
The Banyan Tree
Most restaurants on Gili Trawangan offer vegetarian options as well as traditional Indonesian and western meat dishes, but the Banyan Tree is a dedicated vegetarian and vegan café. Find it next to the beach on the east side of the island, with seating on two floors and a terrace.
Try the Buddha bowl with poached egg, tofu scramble, blueberry pancakes, zucchini lasagna, bell pepper pasta, coconut curry, sweet potato chips, polenta fries, avocado toast and vegan chocolate cake, washed down with fruit smoothies, fresh juices or iced latte with oat milk and hazelnut syrup.
There are many other places to eat and drink all over Gili Trawangan. This is just a selection of recommended restaurants. The Roast House is famous for its rotisserie chicken. Tír na nÓg Irish pub restaurant offers Irish pub favourites with sports TV. And the Malibu Beach Club is a famous party joint that serves western food while the DJ plays. Take a walk round the island and experience something new every day!
