Ethical eating

A new wave of eateries are giving back to the community. Dine with a conscience and taste the feel-good factor.

The indusTrial-chic dining room at Cromwell Streat (streat.com.au) looks like any other café treading the newly orthodox line of local, seasonal and sustainable produce. Those virtues are a given in our hyper-aware dining age – but this coffee house in Melbourne’s Collingwood goes one better. It’s a social enterprise in disguise, so far assisting more than 1000 disadvantaged young people with health, housing and work (and the housemade crumpets are good, too). It’s part of a movement using the positive power of hospitality to make a difference. Head to Hobart’s Hamlet Café (hamlet.org.au) for great coffee served by marginalised people learning the skills to pay the bills. At Folonomo (folonomo.org.au) in Surry Hills, Sydney, you can join hipsters eating dishes such as fish collar with dehydrated chilli knowing that all profits go to good causes, the likes of Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, which helps stop child trafficking in Vietnam. Dining with a conscience takes many forms. Feel virtuous at Oakridge (oakridgewines.com.au) in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, where chef duo Matt Stone and Jo Barrett are zero-wasting their fine-dining menu and paying cultural homage with ingredients foraged with the help of local Indigenous people. And Mexican-food chain Zambrero (zambrero.com.au) brings a whole lot of heart to fast food, with its Plate 4 Plate initiative donating one meal to people in need for every burrito or bowl sold (they’ve surpassed 24 million). Eat so others may, too? Now there’s an excellent excuse to order big and skip the guilt.