In the heart of Batu Bolong, Giselle reimagines the 1980s Mediterranean Riviera through French-trained cooking, sunlit courtyard design, and an all-night party spirit.
A few hundred meters from Batu Bolong’s surf break, past the scooters, tattoo parlours, and boutiques that define Canggu’s streets, a different kind of scene has taken root. Giselle doesn’t try to compete with Canggu’s beach clubs or its rice-paddy cafes. Instead, it borrows from somewhere else entirely: the sun-bleached glamour of the Mediterranean Riviera in the 1980s.
The result is one of the most talked-about openings in Canggu’s restaurant scene, a Mediterranean restaurant with a French culinary backbone, a design language built around marble and limewash, and a hospitality pedigree that stretches from Bangkok to the Bukit.
Where Giselle Sits in Canggu
Giselle occupies a spot on Jalan Tanah Barak, one of Canggu’s most established dining strips and a short walk from Batu Bolong Beach itself. It’s a location that has long attracted restaurateurs looking to catch both the area’s surf crowd by day and its nightlife crowd after dark, and Giselle’s opening hours, from 5 pm until late, suggest it was built with the latter firmly in mind.
Unlike Canggu’s beachfront clubs, which lean on ocean views to do the heavy lifting, Giselle’s setting is entirely self-contained: step through its entrance and the scooters and warungs of Batu Bolong give way to a courtyard built to feel like a private villa somewhere on the Amalfi coast.
Who’s Behind Giselle Bali
Giselle was founded by a group of friends with deep, overlapping roots in Southeast Asian hospitality, rather than a single restaurateur. At the center of the kitchen is Antoine Darquin, a French chef who co-founded Bisou, the Bangkok hotspot recognized in the 2025 Michelin Guide. Darquin partnered on Giselle with sommelier Théo Lavergne, his collaborator at Bisou, who oversees the wine and cocktail program.
The founding group also includes Jules Pierrefitte, founder of Pastel in Bangkok, and Tristan Kastelyn, a DJ and artistic director who shaped both the restaurant’s soundscape and its overall creative direction.
That combination of backgrounds shows up on the plate and in the room. Darquin’s cooking draws on classical French technique, but the flavours lean firmly Mediterranean: olive oil, citrus, char, and the kind of seafood-forward menu you’d expect in Cannes or Antibes. Lavergne’s wine list and cocktail program are built to match, while Kastelyn’s music curation turns the space from a restaurant into something closer to a nightlife destination once the sun goes down.
The Design and Vibe
Giselle’s design is arguably as much a draw as its food, and it has already become one of the most photographed interiors in Canggu. The space is built around a central courtyard that captures the afternoon light, ringed by beige walls, soft linens, and arched doorways that give the room an airy, sun-washed quality. Designers leaned into a Tuscan-meets-Riviera palette with marble-tiled surfaces, limewashed walls, light wood, woven rattan, and warm terracotta tones that echo sandy neutrals and ocean blues rather than Bali’s more familiar tropical-jungle aesthetic.
By night, the space shifts register entirely. The upstairs bar becomes a stage for sunset cocktails and, later, a full-blown party atmosphere, with Kastelyn’s curated soundscape carrying the room from laid-back golden-hour lounging into a louder, dance-floor energy. With capacity for up to 120 guests across its courtyard and upper level, Giselle is built to hold both an intimate dinner and a boisterous late-night crowd without feeling like two different restaurants stitched together.
It’s this dual identity, refined dining room by early evening and lively nightlife venue after 10 pm, that has generated the most conversation about Giselle since it opened. Diners who arrive for an early dinner encounter a (relatively) calm, romantic space that feels closer to a seaside villa than a restaurant. Those who stay later, or arrive after 9 pm, find a different mood entirely, with a resident DJ, louder music, and a crowd that treats the courtyard steps as much for posing as for walking.
The Menu: Mediterranean Flavor, French Technique
Chef Darquin has built the menu around three guiding words: seasonal, sexy, and shareable. Rather than a rigid starter-main-dessert structure, the menu is organised into a series of shareable sections, bites, plates, crudo, seafood platters, a chef’s “hors serie” list, mains, homemade pasta, sides, and dessert, encouraging the kind of grazing, family-style dining that suits Giselle’s social atmosphere.
The crudo section captures the restaurant’s raw, seafood-forward instincts – think Hokkaido scallop with cucumber and buttermilk, bluefin tuna tartare with yuzu and avocado, and wild Tasmanian salmon with citrus. For guests who want the full showcase, a seafood platter combines oysters, prawns, scallop crudo, salmon tartare, and tuna tartare in one presentation.
On the cooked side, the kitchen moves toward fire and smoke with wood-fired asparagus and carrots, a charcoal-grilled red seabream with fennel salad and sauce vierge, and a slow-braised beef cheek cooked for 24 hours among the favourites.
The “chef hors serie” list is where Giselle leans into showmanship. A whole seabass, flambéed tableside and finished in a salt crust with beurre blanc Noilly Prat, headlines the section alongside a Wagyu beef Wellington with foie gras and mushrooms, and a Wagyu tomahawk sold by weight. Madai sashimi with yuzukosho vinaigrette, one of the early standouts, also sits here. For those looking to splurge further, a caviar tin service with brioche and onion espuma tops the menu’s upper price bracket.
The homemade pasta section rounds out the kitchen’s French-Mediterranean balancing act, with a truffle tortellini finished in Comté and Paris ham, a foie gras risotto with shimeji mushrooms, and a crab pappardelle that has become one of the dishes most associated with the restaurant since opening. True to its sourcing philosophy, Giselle works exclusively with sustainable local fishermen, meaning the day’s catch, and the seafood dishes built around it, can shift depending on what comes in.
Cocktails That Will Impress
Cocktails get similar attention to detail, and while they have their signatures and do the classics with distinction, they also showcase their dessert cocktail list. This has been built to double as an after-dinner course, and includes an espresso martini-style pour built on vodka, coffee, and Kahlua; a chocolate old fashioned built on cognac and caramel; and a Bailey’s-and-Frangelico “latte” cocktail designed to read more like tiramisu in a glass than a standard nightcap.
What We Loved
Giselle has an experienced bartending team so feel free to test them, especially if the idea of a chocolate cake in a cocktail glass isn’t your thing. On our visit, the martinis were perfectly made, although expect to pay some of the highest prices in Canggu for the pleasure. The staff are also charming (it’s Bali afterall) and made our visit feel more like an occassion than just dinner on a Thursday night.
The Farmer Pork Chop with pumpkin purée, mole sauce and chermoula, was the culinary highlight, perfectly cooked and proportioned, while the Wagyu Beef Tartare with egg yolk confit and pommes paille was silky, perfectly seasoned and delicious.
What We Didn’t
Expect a vibe in keeping with Canggu’s energy, so if you’re looking for quiet and intimate, this isn’t the place for you, even during an early dinner. During our visit there were no less than seven birthday celebrations, with the staff delivering fireworks and celebratory deserts to each. Come here to celebrate, but not for deep-and-meaningfuls.
Food-wise, the French fries, presented in a McDonalds-esque red carton, were deep fried to death and back, while the whitefish croquetes were mushy and, like many dishes, swimming in overpowering sauce.
If cigerrete smoke is something you’re sensitive to, I would also book a table as far from the bar as possible; even 6-7 metres away in the corner, we had a steady cloud of smoke wafting over from the 5-6 bar dwellers puffing away throughout the visit, despite an army of ceiling fans.
The Bottom Line
Giselle arrived in Canggu with a clear point of view: Mediterranean food built on French technique, served in a room designed to look like a Riviera villa, with a soundtrack and late-night energy built by a professional DJ. Given its design pedigree and the profile of its founding team, reservations are worth making in advance, particularly on weekends.
