Andaz Sanur Bali Hotel Review: A Beautiful Village [9/10]

Introduction

Bali resorts tend to come in two sizes: the mega-resort you navigate by golf buggy, and the twelve-villa boutique where the manager knows your blood type by day two. The Andaz Bali is the rare property that found the midpoint and stayed there. It's 149 rooms and villas arranged as a traditional Balinese village, with a central square for eating and entertainment and a web of open but oddly intimate, moody spaces that feel like a tropical hideaway someone mislaid for fifty years and only recently found again.

The design is a collaboration between Bangkok's Tierra Design and Tokyo's Spin Design Studio, and if any of it feels familiar, you've probably been to its sister property, the Andaz Jomtien Beach in Pattaya, which runs the same idea through a Thai filter. This was my second stay, which is worth mentioning up front, because hotels usually get worse between visits. This one got better.

Location

Sanur, an easy 25 minutes from the airport, and a neighbourhood people either love or write off entirely. I've never understood the write-off. It's the sensible midpoint between Seminyak and Jimbaran: chill, but with plenty to do, and none of the traffic-related despair you'd sign up for further west. You're also on the sunrise side of the island, which is a genuine perk if you're a morning person and a matter of complete indifference if you're not.

The Andaz sits directly next to the Hyatt Regency Bali, and the two operate as friendly neighbours: the gym and spa live over at the Regency's recently renovated facilities, so a workout involves a short stroll off-property. Whether that bothers you is a personality test I'll leave you to take alone.

One thing to know about the beach: this is a tidal stretch, and at low tide the sea packs its bags and leaves. Come midday it's back, clear and blue in every direction. Time your swims, and your Instagram, accordingly.

The Room

The rooms come in four broad flavours (garden view, lagoon access, pool access, and 18 villas), and the first thing to say is that nobody here boarded the tiny-room train. Even the stndar category clears 450 square feet, which in the current era of resort building counts as eccentric generosity.

I had a Deluxe King for most of the stay, one step up from the base room, picked because it's slightly larger and the bathroom looked nicer. For the last night I moved up to a lagoon access suite, which adds a proper living room and a terrace that steps straight into the lagoon, so you can slip from your couch to the water without ever committing to a real walk. Lovely, not essential. The rooms themselves are handsome, and handsome is the precise word: dark enough to be moody, comfortable everywhere it counts, and home to a couch that would win Couch of the Year if the award existed.

Everything in the minibar is free, which is genuinely great, but it's a limited assortment rattling around mostly empty drawers and not one but two fridges, one of them guarding an off-brand cola. The unlimited bottled water and the fully stocked Nespresso setup, on the other hand, I'll take without complaint.

The bathroom is a mixed bag. The double vanity is generous, well stocked and properly lit, and the robes might be the best in Bali: thick, plush, french terry inside, soft knit outside. The custom amenities smell wonderful, though anyone describing that scent as "delicate" also thinks the surface of the sun is a bit warm in places; the whole room smells of them by day two. The shower is the letdown, unnecessarily cramped for a large room and the toilet lives in a cupboard of its own that opens directly onto the bedroom and invites the long-legged to bang a knee.

Dining

The food is the argument for this hotel, so let's take it seriously.

Breakfast, which deserves its own paragraph and arguably its own postcode. The format is an à la carte buffet: order whatever you like, as much as you like, all of it cooked fresh. There's a full range of juices and shooters just for the morning, a matcha bircher muesli that converts matcha sceptics, a soto Madura with braised beef shank, a soufflé pancake, a simit bagel with mint labneh, local berries with kefir and homemade coconut granola, a croffle in miso butterscotch, and a prawn omelette that would headline anywhere else. It doesn't here, because the crêpe fromage exists, and I ordered it every single morning without shame. This is the best breakfast in Bali. Not "one of the best". The best.

Dinner splits between the Fisherman's Club, a Jimbaran-style fish grill down by the beach, and the restaurants around the village square, and I ate my way through both. The short version: the kitchen has real range, and the hit rate is high. At the Fisherman's Club that meant salmon sashimi with mango and ponzu, a sirloin salad substantial enough to be a main, the signature seafood platter, barramundi grilled in banana leaf, and a mango crème brûlée with coconut ice cream to finish, all of it handled simply and confidently. The village square leans more local, and its suckling pig croquettes with sambal jam and a genuinely superb pomelo salad were two of the best small plates I've had on the island, with chicken satay, an Australian sirloin and a chocolate lava cake rounding things out.

The Pools

Three of them. The star is hidden near reception, tucked to the side and buried in foliage, shaded most of the day with just enough sun breaking through to keep the lost-paradise mood intact. It's one of my favourite pools anywhere, and most guests walk straight past it. All the pools are temperature controlled seasonally, which matters more than the brochure makes it sound.

The main beachfront pool does the heavy lifting and does it well, and it trails off into a little river feeding the ground-floor lagoon-access rooms. There's a second block of lagoon rooms on the other side that I'd pick instead: more shade, and the lagoon behaves like a proper lazy river rather than a decorative moat.

The kids' pool is the odd one out, parked to the side of the main corridor with all the family-friendly ambience of a bus lane. Functional, but strangely placed.

Service

The staff are mellow, natural and genuinely good company. They seems to want to look after you as it occur to them rather than because a corporate training insists. Dinign serivce is excellent - plates arriving when they should and nobody needing to be flagged down. Room service and other requests get handled flawlessly.

The Verdict

Overall: 9/10

Book the Andaz Bali if you want the best breakfast on the island attached to a beautifully designed village of a resort, in a part of Bali that's lively without being a performance, with a free minibar and staff who've learned to be people.