10 Questions with Chef Eelke Plasmeijer of Locavore, Ubud’s Best Restaurant

PUBLISHED April 11th, 2017 05:00 am | UPDATED July 28th, 2024 01:38 am

Foodies that follow lists like Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants will be familiar with Locavore, a fine-dining restaurant that focuses on sustainably sourced local ingredients located in the heart of Ubud. Founded by Chefs Eelke Plasmeijer and Ray Adriansyah, as well as Restaurant Manager Adi Karmayasa, this three-year old restaurant has garnered accolades upon accolades for its one-of-a-kind cuisine.

Locavore has now outgrown itself, with sibling establishments like their cocktail bar Night Rooster and deli Locavore To Go sprouting up in the last couple of years. The team at Locavore is one of the biggest champions of Ubud Food Festival (UFF), an annual celebration of Indonesian food happening 12-14 May 2017. In light of the occasion, we spoke with Chef Eelke Plasmeijer about what they’re bringing to the festival, how the Balinese dining scene has changed (or not), and what’s next for Locavore.

Hi Elke! For those unfamiliar with your story, how did the three of you meet?

Ray and I met over 8 years ago in Jakarta. Ray came back from 10 years in New Zealand to be closer from his family and he applied for a job in a restaurant where I was a chef at that time. We had a good click (had a lot of beers together and watched a lot of football matches) and we have been working together since. Our second job in Bali was Alila Ubud and there, we met Adi. He was a waiter at the time (he started as a trainee – super special) and we quickly saw he was the missing link for our restaurant dreams. When we left Alila, Adi was the restaurant manager and I guess it’s him they miss the most!

What was your earliest memory of food?

This is hard. One of my memories of eating was eating the home-baked bread my grandfather used to make. He was a baker boy in his early days before he became a captain on river boats. But he always kept making his own bread and as a kid, I only wanted to eat his bread. I still feel sorry for my parents for being so picky. I called it Opa’s bread and I normally had it with some vegetable soup or some hagelslag (that one you can Google).

Another one, this time from my grandmother, is something called “balkenbrij’. It’s made from pork broth, buckwheat flour, and a spice mélange called ‘rommelkruid’, which means messy/left-over spices. This was a special occasions (Easter, Christmas, birthdays) only breakfast dish. Thinly sliced, fried until crispy in butter and then, with some Opa’s bread…I miss them thinking of this!

What inspired the start of your journey to becoming a chef?

Nothing in particular, but it might have been my Opa if I think about it now. The only other thing I wanted to become was a dustman; I’m happy I changed my mind just in time. But I sort of always wanted to become a cook, not a chef, because being a cook is much more fun.

Ubud Food Festival is dedicated to the diversity of Indonesia’s cuisine and showcasing of it; what else do you think stakeholders in Indonesia’s F&B industry can do to drive more food tourism to the country?

First of all: the people behind the UFF are brilliant! Only they have the balls to start something and keep on building it! They really, really have our respect. I wish there were more brave people like them in this beautiful country because most of the others only talk. We contacted the Ministry of Tourism once but let me only say that I will never, ever do this again – what a disappointment!

Honestly, nobody really cared. Hotels don’t care, most restaurants don’t care, Indonesian ‘celebrity’ chefs don’t care, the ministry people don’t care and pretty much all other cooks don’t care about what this county has to offer. I mean open a random (and mostly very boring) local food magazine and look at the produce everybody is using: salmon, foie gras, truffle, olive oil, imported cheeses, scallops, pigeon, duck, and I can go on for ever. Of course there are a few exceptions but in general, nobody gives a damn.

That said, how do you think the food scene in Bali has evolved ever since the conceptualization of Locavore?

Not at all. Restaurants might call the ingredients local nowadays, but if you really look at what they are using it is still the same as before.

A tropical archipelago of 17,000 islands, saying Indonesia is huge is an understatement. Which other type of regional cuisine do you enjoy?

I’ve lived in Indonesia for over 10 years and I haven’t been anywhere yet…sad but true! This job keeps you away from traveling, really. But this might change in the coming months with some interesting trips on the agenda after the high season – Sumatra, Papua, Sumba, and more. We set up this project almost a year ago where we send our team members to travel Indonesia. Little groups of 3 or 4 go away for 5 days. So far, they’ve been to Jakarta, Bandung, Medan, Jogya, Solo, Malang, Surabaya, Madura and Padang. They go there to discover ingredients, cooking methods, traditional dishes but mostly to learn and discover their own country! Ray and Adi have gone a few times and it’s my turn just after UFF.

To answer your question, I really like Padang and Sunda food. My wife grew up in Bogor and her family still lives there, so going there automatically means eating some great food. To be honest, there’re too many regions I haven’t tried yet, but this is going to change because we are setting up Nusantara, where we’re going to serve authentic dishes from all around the Archipelago. I can’t wait and I really hope we get more people enthusiastic for Indonesian cuisine because it is super underrated if you ask me.

The theme of Ubud Food Festival this year is “every flavour has a story”. What sort of stories can consumers expect from Locavore at the festival?

Too many. We are all over the place: Nusantara, LocaLAB, our cocktail bar The Night Rooster; we are even setting up a proper butcher shop next to Locavore To Go. We are doing so many events that I have to check the festivals website to remember what they all are but hopefully they are all going to be different, weird, and fun!

Since Locavore only uses sustainably sourced ingredients from Bali, do you have a favourite island produce that you particularly enjoy using in the dishes?

Because we change our menus all the time, this is also changing all the time. At the moment, I really like banana blossom, bankal hitam, sorghum, palm heart, and as always, kemangi.

Your new R&D arm, LocaLAB is also hosting a “Wild Fermentation” masterclass. Why did members of your team zero in on this topic?

A lot of Indonesian dishes use produce that has been fermented, and because it is super interesting. Think of tempeh, brem, tuak, sambals, tape, and so on. What I like about fermentation is that is really can change a ‘simple’ product into something really funky and interesting.

What’s next for all of you at Locavore? Any exciting projects upcoming?

I mentioned we are opening Nusantara, LocaLAB, and The Butcher Shop all in June. Besides that, we are working on Locavore 2.0, but we can only talk about that in a few months.

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