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ver the past few years, restaurants that serve organic food or vegetarian meals have been popping up in town, following a growing trend among health conscious people.

Dharma Kitchen vegetarian resto and café, the House of Peace (Hope) and Healthy Choice are among the restaurants in town that embrace vegetarian and vegan foods.

Toni Widjaja of Dharma Kitchen (formerly Citarasa restaurant) says the place aims at educating people that vegetarian dishes are healthy yet environmentally friendly. He was referring to reports saying that livestock is one of the major causes of environmental problems, including global warming and land degradation.

“People used to eat poultry, for instance, by breeding them at home, while today, things have changed and there is more factory farming for the sake of increasing animal production. And many people do not consider the environmental factor,” Toni says.

Being a vegetarian, Toni realizes that it is not right to kill and eat animals as they have a right to live.

Vegetarian cuisine has been stigmatized as being plain and boring. If you think like this, you would be dead wrong.

Dharma Kitchen offers a mouthwatering array of everyday meals, from Indonesian delicacies such as rendang (beef stew), pepes (steamed chicken or fish) and ikan bumbu Bali (Balinese style fish); Chinese food like a variety of dim sum and Peking Duck to Western cuisine like black pepper steak and mushroom fettuccine.

Of course, the restaurant uses mock meat to create dishes with morsels that taste like poultry, pork, beef and seafood.

Mock meat is basically veggie versions of common meat products to replace animal products. Dharma Kitchen uses mock meat made of soybean or hioko mushroom, which gives a unique texture of real chicken or beef. And they do smell and taste like the real animal products.

“The presentation is helpful for novices because the dishes taste like real meat,” said Toni.

The chefs at Dharma Kitchen also use their imagination in developing new variants of vegetarian cuisine like rumput laut salat mangga (seaweed and mango salad), ayam rawit (chicken with small hot chilies) and lumpia pisang talas (spring roll with banana and taro).

Dharma Kitchen also sells bakery items like bread with various toppings, toast, cakes and pastries.

Another restaurant offering vegetarian cuisine is the House of Peace (Hope), which is nestled in the shady area of South Jakarta’s Kebayoran Baru.

Among its signature dishes are sapi lada hitam (black pepper beef) and iga bakar (grilled beef ribs).

As for the ingredients, the restaurant creates its own version of chicken made of kembang tahu (soy cake), while the bones are created from sliced cane.

Besides accepting dine-in and takeout orders, Hope also offers catering services for workers.

“The menu changes daily, comprising vegetables and two side dishes. [In March] for just Rp 18,000 [US$1.96] per pack, customers get the aforementioned meal as well as steamed rice, kerupuk (crackers) and sliced fruit,” said Razif Rivai, the marketing staffer of Hope.

Meantime, those wanting real meat in their meals can opt for dining places that offer organic food like Healthy Choice.

“Indonesians tend to be reluctant to change their lifestyle until they finally get sick. We want to educate society about the benefits of healthy living,” said Nurhasanah of Healthy Choice.

To meet the organic criteria, Healthy Choice strictly and carefully selects its food suppliers, requiring a certificate for their products.

Mi godog (green veggie noodles with shrimp, fish balls and white cabbage), steam fish ala Thai (steamed dory fish served with Chinese cabbage, shitake mushrooms and coriander) and crispy mushroom (shimeji mushroom with toasted oats served with thousand islands dip) are some of the restaurants’ signature dishes.

For Asian food, the chefs substitute fatty coconut milk with soy milk.

Healthy Choice not only uses natural organic products but also carries out an organic manner in preparing the menu.

“There are some fried dishes available on our menu, but we use grape seed oil for frying because it is considered healthier as it contains vitamin E,” Nurhasanah explained.

The restaurant also uses kitchen equipment made with safe materials to cook at high temperatures.

— Photos by Triwik Kurniasari