Named for the traditional Balinese kitchen, housed inside a restored Javanese wooden building — Paon Restaurant is where Swarma slows all the way down.
In Bali, paon is the word for kitchen — but not just any kitchen. It carries with it the idea of the family hearth, the room where the household actually happens, where warmth and food and conversation are the same thing. It felt like the only possible name for the restaurant we built at the centre of Swarma.
Paon lives inside a restored antique wooden house, carried over from Java and rebuilt here in the garden, open air, unhurried by design. The kitchen draws from Balinese and Indonesian traditions — the flavours of the archipelago, cooked the way they're meant to be — alongside a set of Western dishes for guests who want something familiar alongside something new. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all served here, which means a stay at Swarma never really requires leaving the property, though of course you're free to.
Non residents are welcome too. Some of our favourite evenings at Paon are shared with guests from elsewhere in Ubud who came for dinner on a friend's recommendation and stayed until the candles burned low.
What we hope guests notice, beyond the food itself, is the pace of the place. Nothing at Paon is built for speed. The restaurant sits in a garden setting meant for lingering — a long lunch that runs into the afternoon, a breakfast eaten slowly enough to watch the light change across the pool. It is, in many ways, the clearest expression of what Swarma is trying to be: a kitchen, in the fullest sense of the word.
