Words by James Louie
Photographs by Martin Westlake
September 5, 2025

Amid a tourism boom, creatives on Bali’s up-and-coming island neighbor are championing locally made products with an ethical, eco-conscious edge.

A plate of octopus carpaccio at Simonetta; the same restaurant’s owners Indra Budiman and Melissa Mattei. — *Left to right:* Octopus carpaccio at Simonetta; the same restaurant’s owners Indra Budiman and Melissa Mattei.

Midway through a plate of octopus carpaccio, I’m distracted by the growing din of dangdut music. The thumping beat sends vibrations through the upstairs dining room at Simonetta, a year-old Provençal restaurant in the heart of Kuta. Not the Kuta of Bali fame, mind you, but the one on Lombok’s south coast—a once-sleepy surf village now humming with boho restaurants and cafés, wellness centers, boutiques, and small hotels. Yet for all the contemporary buzz, glimpses of the indigenous Sasak culture are never far from view. Case in point: the wedding procession now moving through the street below, bringing traffic to a standstill. Passing tourists stop to gawk at the resplendently dressed newlyweds and their boisterous entourage; a handful join the dancing village women.

But beneath this confluence of tradition, modern music, and global beach culture, the Indonesian island has a lesser-known creative side. Kuta is where I begin a six-day journey focused on Lombok-based designers, artisans, and entrepreneurs—many united by an eco-conscious ethos and a commitment to uplift local communities.

Simonetta’s young owners, Indra Budiman and Melissa Mattei, are part of that new wave. The Sasak-French husband and wife launched a boutique for natural skincare products and accessories just before Covid hit. When tourism dried up, they pivoted to YouTube, documenting their lives on the Indra Sasak channel and racking up 1.1 million subscribers in the process. But being full-time YouTubers was never the goal. “Indra always wanted to open a restaurant,” Mattei explains.

Open from morning to night, Simonetta serves a menu inspired by the comfort food she ate growing up on the French Riviera. Her recipes utilize local vegetables and herbs, fruits, poultry, and seafood: hence the aforementioned octopus and a dish of medium-rare tuna covered in a creamy beurre citronné sauce. The decor channels the Med, matching arched wall recesses and potted plants with throw cushions upholstered in Provençal fabrics with botanical motifs. When he’s not at the restaurant, Indra heads the district association for peresean, a Sasak martial art. The experienced fighter uses a painted rattan rod wrapped tightly in rope. “It’s hard as asphalt,” Indra winces. “When you bleed from the head, you lose.” Peresean, he adds, was once performed to summon rain during times of drought.

*Left to right:* The subhanale motif adorns clothing at a Sasak wedding procession; bougainvillea along a Kuta street.

*Left to right:* Indian Ocean surf; a villa designed by Bamboo Lab at Cocoon Reserve.

Perhaps it still is. Though my visit falls squarely in the dry season, thick rainclouds make for a gloomy morning at Cocoon Reserve, a nearby wellness resort being developed by a German surfing couple. The general manager, Ifan Pradana, shows me around the forested hillside site where 25 villas are taking shape, along with slim pylons for an inclinator that will one day whisk guests to a plant-based restaurant and pool. Pradana, who spent 15 years in Bali working for luxury hotels, appreciates Lombok’s quieter rhythm. “I like being a village person,” he laughs.

While Cocoon Reserve now relies on in-house architects, the first six villas were built by Bamboo Lab, a Kuta-based studio established in 2020. “I found inspiration in trying to convince people that bamboo buildings are for everyone,” says Miftahurrahma Ridwan, a senior architect at Bamboo Lab. Her eyes light up when she speaks of bamboo as “green steel,” a sturdy, fast growing material that absorbs more carbon dioxide than most tree species. The bamboo used in the firm’s projects is sourced mainly from Lombok, then soaked in a nontoxic solution at Bamboo Lab’s own treatment facility to protect against termites and fungi. “The fun part of working in bamboo is its flexibility. You can make straight lines but also play with organic curves and mimic nature,” Ridwan adds.

Not far away, the studio’s offices are housed in a seashell inspired structure near the crest of a hill overlooking Kuta. The space is shared with a Japanese fusion restaurant called Milky Wave, where sustainability underpins the menu’s emphasis on local produce. While select items like wagyu, salmon, and ikura are imported from Japan, most ingredients are Indonesian. Tanned and athletic, head chef Saito Tsutomu experiments with dried fish to create dashi and buys tuna weighing up to 80 kilograms directly from local fishermen. “Lombok has a lot of good-quality seafood,” he says. “But fishermen don’t know how to keep and process them.” He cites shinkei-jime, a centuries old Japanese technique for handling fish that produces a firmer texture and longer-lasting umami flavors. “For the next step, I want to teach them practices like this.”

*Left to right:* Ceiling details at Bamboo Lab’s offices; Lombok tuna and sambal at Japanese fusion restaurant Milky Wave.

A view of Selong Belanak Beach from a hilltop villa at Sempiak Seaside Resort.

*Left to right:* Inside craft cocktail bar Klub Kembali; a gardener at Saifana Organic Farm.

The following day, I head west toward a string of surf-beaten beaches, each one more beautiful than the last. Inland from the cream-hued sweep of Selong Belanak Beach, craft cocktail bar Klub Kembali spotlights Indonesian distilled spirits. Occupying a Javanese joglo house with a homey, eclectic vibe, it’s the brainchild of self-taught Swiss mixologist Daniel Schwizer and his wife, Minnesotan artist Elissa Gjertson. The pair first came to Indonesia in late 2017 for a corporate project and landed in Lombok during their weekend travels. “We fell in love with Selong Belanak,” Schwizer tells me. “First with the nature and the slower pace compared to Bali, then with the people here.” The couple relocated a year later, and Klub Kembali opened in 2022.

At the central bar, Schwizer offers me a taste of his homemade chili liqueur—a complex and dangerously drinkable homage to Lombok’s spicy cuisine. I also try a glass of his latest creation, which layers a base of Bali’s East Indies gin with ingredients found in the chicken soup soto ayam. Bold and intense, the peppery cocktail has notes of turmeric, galangal, ginger, and lime. It’s right up my alley.

Just down the road lies another of their projects, Plastik Kembali, where Gjertson greets me with a dazzling smile. “Coba coba is our mantra,” she says with the charisma of a motivational speaker at a TED talk. Indonesian for “give it a try,” it’s a phrase often uttered by her team of Lombok artisans. Drawn to the vibrant colors and textures of plastics she saw during community cleanups, Gjertson leaned on Scandinavian craft skills passed down through her maternal line. “My grandmother was a quilter. She’d make cordage from scrap material, and I thought, well, what if we do this with recycled plastic?”

Plastik Kembali does just that: combining plastic, waste textiles, and natural fibers to make the studio’s signature tali (rope). While baskets and other homewares were the initial focus, the team shifted to one-of-a-kind art works for their longer lifespans. Some can be seen at the two-story gallery inside the nearby Sempiak Seaside Resort. Launched late last year and curated by Bali’s Nyaman Gallery, it’s home to Cove, a site-specific installation with “reefs” of tali and raffia, coral-like sculptures, and printer ink–paintings on old bedsheets.

Left to right: Raw materials used by local skincare brand Iwani; artist Elissa Gjertson at her Plastik Kembali studio in Selong Belanak.

Gjertson was also among the handful of women who set up the Lombok Eco Market collective in 2019. “The goal was to highlight local art and craft, and the commitment to sustainability across Lombok,” she says. LEM has since grown to include 45 like-minded businesses and organizations.

One is Pinalo, which works with craftspeople to transform another waste product: pineapple leaves. Founded by LEM pioneer Aisyah Odist, the brand—whose name is short for Pineapple of Lombok—involves all four of the island’s regencies in the production cycle. Pineapple leaves sourced from farmers in East Lombok are stripped by machine to extract their fiber, which is then processed and sent to weavers in West and Central Lombok. Farms in North Lombok contribute the raw materials for natural dyes: tamarind seed, marigolds, indigo leaves, sappanwood, and coconut fiber.

Outside a bright yellow house in Sukarara, a weaving village between Kuta and the city of Mataram, Aisyah shares how artisans were initially hesitant to work with pineapple fiber. Then came Covid. “There were few tourists and no work, so they wanted to try. It turned out to be a good time for me to start Pinalo,” she recalls. The ecopreneur went house to house, offering weavers double the usual rate for cotton textiles and paying them directly instead of going through art shops, which can take a steep cut. “It started with two women. They realized it was not as difficult as they thought, and more ladies wanted to join.”

While we talk, some artisans separate clumps of pineapple fiber into threads to be spun around wooden bobbins; others sit at clacking looms weaving gorgeous creations adorned with Sasak patterns. “We are raising up the culture,” Aisyah says. “We cannot change these motifs, because they tell the story of those who live here.” Among them is subhanale, featuring flower-like shapes framed in a honeycomb pattern. Embroidered on the songket cloths worn by the bride and groom at the wedding procession I saw earlier, the Central Lombok motif shows up in Pinalo’s wall hangings, tote bags, and pouches. The weavers also make tops, sun hats, and yoga mat holders—a bestseller in Kuta.

Handwoven textiles in Sukarara village; Sukarara-based weavers with Pinalo founder Aisyah Odist (center). — *Left to right:* Handwoven textiles in Sukarara village; Sukarara weavers with Pinalo founder Aisyah Odist (center).

*Left to right:* A Sasak music troupe on the road; the upper cascade of North Lombok’s Sendang Gile waterfall.

At an R&D park on the outskirts of Mataram, 37-year-old entrepreneur Iwin Insani oversees the production facility for her skincare brand Iwani. She was spurred to action in 2018 after reading about the chemicals in conventional sunscreen that were bleaching Hawaii’s coral reefs. Her organic formulas for soaps and reef-safe sunscreens are crafted from Indonesian ingredients, including coconut oil procured in North Lombok, beeswax from West Lombok and Sumbawa—the next island over—and illipe butter from Borneo.

Iwin shows me an after-sun cream (available in a lavender geranium or lemon-eucalyptus scent) that also moisturizes the skin and repels mosquitoes. More than 300 hotels across Indonesia stock her products; some are exported to Germany and the Netherlands. Closer to home, the brand supports volunteer programs in the neglected hilltop village of Bunbeleng. After planting 1,250 saplings that will grow into banyans and various food-bearing trees, Iwin and her team will also dig wells. “For us at Iwani, sustainability cannot come before poverty.”

The final leg of my journey brings me to the North Lombok countryside, where the Gindroz family bought an abandoned cashew orchard in 2013. “It was barren, with rocks and sand and no water. Only cashew trees could grow here,” remembers Sutikno, the soft-spoken Javanese patriarch. He and his Swiss wife Anne-Sophie had returned to Indonesia after their careers in humanitarian work had taken them to China, Switzerland, Mali, and Laos. Envisioning this spot as a place for family reunions with their seven globally dispersed children, they began building wooden bungalows.

After years of hard work to replenish the soil, the one-hectare plot grew into Saifana Organic Farm, an agrotourism business with cozy accommodation and a vegetarian restaurant. I find it hard to imagine that the fertile surroundings were once a dry, unproductive patch of land. Quacking ducks roam fields that yield everything from eggplants and winged beans to passion fruit and papayas. “The cashew trees are still here, but the rest was planted by us,” confirms the Gindrozes’ 29-year-old daughter Amina, who runs the farm.

She recalls the earthquakes that shook North Lombok in 2018 during the family’s first summer living at Saifana. “That was a real wake-up call for us,” Amina says. “All the bridges were about to collapse and the trucks stopped coming, so the local market had very little food. That’s when we realized we have land, we have a garden, let’s focus on growing our own food.”

Today, the farm delivers boxes of fresh vegetables to cafés and restaurants all over Lombok; its trigona honey is used in establishments like Klub Kembali. Saifana also roasts cashews, turning the tart cashew apples into jam and herbal infusions. Apart from running a garden consultancy and connecting organic farmers with buyers, the team plants community gardens in schools and villages, and joins cleanups with the local chapter of volunteer organization Trash Hero. The Gindroz family also formed the Tanah Inaq Foundation to support vulnerable women and children while tackling underage marriage, a pervasive issue in Lombok.

Sutikno emphasizes that the farm was never meant to be a business. “The intention from the start was to try and make something here that could produce not only for ourselves, but also benefit others. Now, we can enjoy that happiness.”

*Left to right:* Cashew apples at Saifana Organic Farm; ducks in the vegetable fields outside Saifana’s two-bedroom Fanili bungalow.

Lombok Locator

WHERE TO STAY

Sempiak Seaside Resort
A boutique hideaway of villas and cottages steps from Selong Belanak Beach ( rom US$59 per night).

Saifana Organic Farm
This family-run operation with four bungalows offers garden tours, cooking classes, and hands-on workshops (from US$22 per night).

WHERE TO SHOP

Pinalo
Beautifully handwoven textiles and accessories in pineapple fiber.

Lombok Eco Market
A local makers’ collective that has a store at Kuta’s Oasis bistro and organizes monthly pop-up markets.

Iwani
Organic, reef-safe skincare products featuring Indonesian botanicals.

Plastik Kembali
One-of-a-kind artworks from upcycled waste materials, sold through Bali’s Nyaman Gallery.

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK

Simonetta
Comforting Provençal fare in Kuta made with Lombok produce.

Milky Wave
Japanese fusion cuisine inside a striking bamboo structure on a hill above Kuta.

Klub Kembali
A Selong Belanak cocktail bar and restaurant whose tipples focus on Indonesian craft spirits.

This article originally appeared in the August/September 2025 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Lombok in Motion”). Buy a single issue or subscribe here.

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