The argument in two numbers
The 74 places to eat this guide holds in Denpasar have a median Google price band topping out at Rp 75,000. The 154 in Canggu top out at Rp 200,000. Their average ratings are 4.68 and 4.67, which is the same number.
You are not paying two and a half times as much in Canggu for better food. You are paying it for the room, the sea, and the fact that the menu is in English.
A discovered city that visitors decided is not for them
Denpasar is where six hundred thousand people actually live, and it has no beach, no rice terrace and no sunset bar to price into the bill. 24 of the 74 sit in the cheapest bands. 47 of them are rated 4.7 or better. Between them they carry 112,290 Google reviews, so this is not an undiscovered city. It is a discovered city that visitors have decided is not for them.
Go for lunch, and that is a data point
Of the 68 with published hours, 41 open by eight in the morning and 16 are shut by eight at night. The best of this is daytime trade for people going to work, and the traffic out of the city in the evening is worse than the traffic in.
One thing the numbers admit about themselves: 38 of the 74 are cafés and bakeries against 36 restaurants, which is not the balance you would expect from a city of warungs. That is what a map collection kept by someone who lives in the south looks like. The coffee got saved; the rice stalls mostly did not. 16 entries also carry no price band at all, so the median above is drawn from 58 of them.
You will be navigating in Indonesian
This is the one part of the trip where the English-language cushion goes away. Signage is Indonesian, menus often are too, and the addresses are the kind that a driver needs pinned rather than described.
That makes it a maps, translate and messaging afternoon, all of which want a working connection rather than the wifi of a cafe you have not found yet. It is also, for what it is worth, the part of Bali most worth being slightly unprepared in.
