COMMITTED TO LOCAL
Meet chefs Ray Adriansyah and Eelke Plasmeijer, catalysts between ethical producers and discriminating diners
When Indonesian Ray Adriansyah and Dutchman Eelke Plasmeijer first moved from Jakarta to Bali, they had no idea what lay in store for them. Less did they know about the flora and fauna of the land and it is perhaps this lack of knowledge and their curiosity that led them to be who they are today — chef and patrons of Locavore in Ubud.
“We go way back, 11 years almost. I was cooking in a restaurant in Jakarta and Ray joined the team. We moved to Bali and opened our first restaurant on the beach in south Bali. Even then we often asked ourselves why we were doing this — cooking with imported ingredients. However, we soon discovered farms growing local produce, the local fish markets and it changed our mindsets. But the real change came when we took over the restaurant of a hotel in Ubud. There we started playing with local ingredients, introducing seasonal tasting menus with Balinese flavours. We got into it and guests found it interesting. It was there and then that we decided if we ever open a restaurant this is what we would do — go local,” says Plasmeijer, who is the only “import” at Locavore.
“When we opened Locavore we probably never knew the words zero waste or sustainability. We just do what we do and it all fell into place, in the right spot,” he adds.
However, you have to ask “why Bali” when the Indonesian archipelago is made up of thousands of beautiful islands. “Bali is beautiful; there is no island like it. With the tourist industry, it attracts open-minded people. Going local would not work anywhere else in Indonesia. We did a pop-up in Jakarta for two weeks and it was a success, but it is a different clientele. They often come with different expectations and not always to enjoy the food. It’s more to check out what is being done. In Bali, people come with the right expectations and that’s fun for us, because they know what to expect and it’s more fun to cook for them rather than to cook for people who come because a restaurant has a certain name,” says Plasmeijer. As Adriansyah emphasises: “Bali is the only spot in Indonesia for us to do this.”
Since Locavore’s concept is to be a catalyst between local producers and diners, the menu is seasonal with dishes changing weekly, two dishes a week on an average.
Though diners are given a choice between a five-course or a seven-course menu, a meal at Locavore, No.21 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant list, is never short of surprises. What preludes every meal is a nine-course “snack menu”.
“I like to put the snacks on the menu and Ray likes to keep them a surprise. You order the five- or seven-course menu, but with the snacks you get a 20-course meal. We like the feeling of being a generous restaurant. Our tasting menu is expensive, but in the end it turns out to be real good value for money. People always notice it and there are items on the snack menu that are crowd pleasers. But we never differentiate between creating a dish or a snack. For us it is the same,” says Plasmeijer.
“For us, it’s guests coming to a restaurant, sitting down, placing their orders and then getting a surprise snack. We love that,” Adriansyah says.
Through the creative process, there is never any differentiation between main dishes and the snacks. As Plasmeijer points out, Locavore’s dishes are small and usually three to four bites. The snacks are always one bite so when they work on a dish they know right away if it’s going to be a snack or one of the courses. “Sometimes a dish becomes an amuse bouche and sometimes a dessert becomes a pre-dessert. But it is not often that a dish becomes a snack or the snack becomes a dish,” says Plasmeijer.
Locavore’s raison d’être is to continually reinvent itself while improving on the concept of using authentic Indonesian ingredients and moving away from locally produced but not really Indonesian ingredients. The restaurant doesn’t use beetroots, radishes and no produce that has been in Indonesia for a while, but isn’t really Indonesian.
“If we use a cow or pig they have to be Balinese. Even with the herbs, we don’t use thyme or basil, we use the Indonesian varieties,” says Plasmeijer.
“We are focused mainly on Balinese-grown produce because our friends and suppliers are based here. We have four-to-five farmers who grow our vegetables, but we also get produce from Java, Sumatra and seafood from Lombok, due to its cleaner, better seas and high-quality fish,” adds Adriansyah.
But the local sourcing and foraging doesn’t end there. The chefs also bring in seeds from different islands for their farmers to grow. As Plasmeijer says: “Balinese cuisine is interesting but it is narrowed down. It’s always a little bit of the same using the same range of ingredients. There are things that are grown here but not used. A lot of wild things are grown but not used. We have small vegetable gardens a little outside of Ubud, but we mostly deal with farmers in the highlands. There are no middle men.”
“We believe in sharing and there is no way we are going to keep this ‘Locapedia’ knowledge for ourselves. You ask us any questions and we will tell you. No secrets here. We like to work with chefs who are from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, who all have the same ingredients but use them so differently. It is stupid if we don’t get together. It is also fun to get with people who share the same concept. We actually want people to not copy Locavore but do similar stuff. Showcase local produce and local ways of cooking,” says Adriansyah.
“I believe that it is not about us anymore. It is about the people who work with us. This is why it works well. We are not running the perfect restaurant here, far from that, but it works for us. And Ray and I don’t hang out on our days off, so that works well, too,” laughs Plasmeijer.
When we opened Locavore we probably never knew the words zero waste or sustainability. We just do what we do and it all fell into place
Locavore has another three years left at their current location and that has lead to Locavore 2.0. “We cannot grow in our current location. We would love to be out of town, have more kitchen space and be in nature; to give diners the complete Indonesian experience … that is Locavore 2.0. We want to relocate to the rice fields, build the restaurant from scratch, concentrate on dinner alone and maybe have simple rooms so we can cook guests breakfast, too. We probably want to be 10-15 minutes outside Ubud, in the Balinese countryside. By the end of the year, we will have all the details locked in. That is the dream and that was already the dream when we opened Locavore,” says Plasmeijer.
“It is also an opportunity for us to build something from zero. To do it proper one time. That is something that we are also looking forward to,” adds Adriansyah.