Green Monday partners Singapore restaurants to offer Vegan Food like Omnipork, Beyond Meats & JUST Eggs
Plant-based food must sound strange to the vigorous meat-eater. In fact, although there is a rise in the number of vegans in Singapore, Singaporeans are mostly unaware or uncomfortable with the idea of a plant-based diet.
But what if plant-based food can imitate meat, and not just in a “Junk Food Vegan” kind of way with their processed and mock meats? What if you don’t have to “convert” into a vegan, but simply be more open to the idea that plant-based food can actually taste as good, if not sometimes better, than meat-based dishes?
Green Monday
Green Monday is a startup that began in 2012, in Hong Kong, with a vision that seeks to educate, impact and raise awareness on low-carbon, sustainable living – and not only through eating. Plant-based eating isn’t just a healthier option, but one that also targets global warming issues as well as food supply issues. Through Green Monday, we understand how our food choices affect the earth, and how we can take baby steps to introduce more plant-based options into our daily lives.
The Plant-based diet
One of the ways we can “pledge” to Green Monday is to adopt a reduced meat diet one day in a week. That can mean for you to pick a plant-based meal over a meat-based one; like trying a veggie pizza instead of pepperoni pizza!
This Green Monday movement has been on the rise in the USA and in Hong Kong, where the number of vegan people is substantial. David Yeung, the founder of Green Monday, also launched Green Common, a plant-based concept store which has five branches across Hong Kong in 2015.
Singapore’s on it!
It is in the spirit of promoting plant-based food that Green Monday has collaborated with some of Singapore’s vegan eateries and restaurants (and some which aren’t!). We were invited to Winestone and Food Exchange at Novotel Singapore on Stevens Road, HRVST, CarversX and Original Sin (there’s another one called Whole Earth which we hadn’t got a chance to try) over the course of three days to try out some of the plant-based dishes prepared by innovative chefs. We were in for a huge surprise!
As an unaware and uninformed meat and seafood lover, I’ve had my reservations about trying these plant-based dishes. Would they be bland? Greasy? Underwhelming? My biased expectations of plant-based food would be thrown out of the window in the three-days I had exposed myself to these plant-based dishes.
Novotel Singapore on Stevens
It all started with Novotel’s little Sunday lunch session.
The first dish was the appetizer, a steamed JUST egg custard with pureed truffles. This dish blew me away with its tongue-in-cheek presentation and taste. It was like an actual egg custard, both taste, and texture-wise! A kind of chawanmushi, if you will. JUST egg is made with an ingredient derived from mung beans, and it does not involve chickens or actual eggs at all.
How clever is this presentation? (Of course, the hotel still serves actual eggs to its guests, but it presents JUST eggs as another option for vegans and the general public’s awareness)
Next up was a burrito made with a scrambled JUST egg, along with some salsa and onions. We felt the scrambled egg version of the JUST egg didn’t quite match up to the taste of actual eggs as the custard had presented, and instead bordered on the texture and taste of mashed chickpeas. It was still not bad. It’s interesting to know that there are many ways to prepare JUST eggs.
This was one of our favourites. “Meat” balls made using Beyond Meat. The Beyond Meatballs $16++ tasted like chicken and the tomato sauce and soy cheese which coated the dish made it an exhilarating combination! It’s actually a mixture of pea protein isolates, yeast, and other ingredients. By now, we were truly impressed with the innovativeness of the chef as well as the taste of these meatless ingredients.
This dish is Omnipork Phad Krapow $29++, made with minced omnipork and served with a side of vegetables and rice. It was delicious, flavourful and addictive, though I wouldn’t say it shares the pork’s chewy texture.
Omnipork is a plant-based protein made from pea, non-GMO soy, shiitake mushroom, and rice. It is manufactured by Right Treat, which is led by David Yeung. It is 70% lower in saturated fat, 200% higher in calcium and contains 50% more iron than in pork.
The final dish for Day 1 of Green Monday campaign in Singapore was a Beyond Burger $19++, made with a Beyond Meat patty. This was a really outstanding attempt at recreating beef – not only did it look like beef, but it tasted like it too.
If you visit Novotel Singapore on Stevens, you can request for these vegan options!
Novotel Singapore on Stevens
Orchard District, 28 Stevens Road #01-01, Singapore 257878
Tel: +65 6491 6100
Website: https://www.novotel-singapore-stevens.com/offers/plant-base-food/
CarversX
Day 2 of the Green Monday movement in Singapore was held at CarversX, along with MILK (Mainly I Love Kids), an organisation that provides assistance for and seeks to develop underprivileged children. We had the pleasure of dining with them and trying out Omnipork dishes created by chef Sarah Lin. I feel that having a completely ‘meaty’ outlet dishing out options for plant-based food choices is a very bold move and one that really says a lot about wanting to do its part towards a more food-sustainable future.
These well-spiced omnipork balls were rich in flavour and had the texture of meatballs indeed! Chef Sarah Lin surprised us by having stuffed some secret cheese within the omnipork balls to replicate a cheesy meatball – and what can we say? We adore it!
The omnipork-ball burger was up next. Three omnipork-balls were sandwiched within this burger – along with some soy cheese (which reminded us of feta cheese). These balls were plainer than the first dish, but plain in all the good ways. Many other food tasters enjoyed the subtle flavour of the omnipork and the crispness of the omnipork-ball, and some preferred it to its more zesty cousin, the spiced omnipork-balls!
The third and last dish was an omnipork-ball sub, with a generous amount of regular cheese. This was easily our best-loved choice amongst the three, with its well-toasted bun lined with three cheese-stuffed omnipork-balls, along with a side of fries. We can definitely imagine eating this occasionally (and for our own Green Monday pledges).
Visit CarversX to try out their vegan options – and let yourself be surprised by how much you may really like these vegan balls!
CarversX
8 Marina View #02-15 Asia Sq Tower 1, Singapore 018960
Website: https://www.carversand.co/
HRVST
For Day 2’s dinner, we dined at the HRVST restaurant. It’s located in a lush outdoorsy place just outside of a yoga haven, in the OUE building. It also has an indoor side to the restaurant, but we definitely wouldn’t want to miss out on the alfresco experience with greenery all around. They switched on the string of lights, which made the space look more spectacular than it already was!
This first dish is a deep fried omnipork sandwich. To be honest, the taste and texture resembled a slightly bland potato coquette, but I really enjoyed the crisp toast that went with it.
This was a personal favourite for me that night! Potato strips noodles with fried onion, mushrooms, and chive oil! The potato noodles were slightly crunchy (as potatoes should be), and has a bit of a vinegarette taste having been soaked in the chive oil – which makes it a suitable candidate for an appetizer!
A petite dessert to finish off the lovely night! It’s a chocolate cake with an almond wedge and banana sorbet atop a bed of peanut butter sauce!
Are you impressed at the many ways vegan food can look so good by now? I really hope you are!
HRVST
OUE Downtown Gallery, 6A Shenton Way, #05-01, Singapore 068815
Tel: +65 6920 7500
Mon to Fri 11:30am – 2:30pm, 5:30 – 10:00pm
Sat 11:00am – 3:00pm
Website: https://abt-hrvst.com/
Original Sin
For day 3, the final day of Green Monday’s campaign in Singapore, we met in Original Sin, a Mediterranean restaurant. What better way to end the special Green Monday ‘food tour’ than with a large spread of delicious vegan food?
The first dish we were served was a Mezze Platter (S-$22, L-$32). It’s got a wide selection of dips, and the pita bread was absolutely good on its own too! The middle eastern dips are designed for communal sharing: hummus, beetroot, walnut, and capsicum and almond. These fried feta served with falafel balls are addictive – we popped at least two into our mouths!
The mandatory salad, Beetroot Salad $19. It’s got roasted beetroot, spinach, edamame beans, avocado, yoghurt, and walnut! Fresh greens with chunks of beetroot, refreshing, but watch out for teeth stains!
These grilled King Oyster Mushrooms $28 tasted really smokey and sweet – but were a tad too tough when biting into the mushroom’s stalk. It’s served with asparagus, artichoke, roasted potatoes, and tomatoes!
Next up is the O.S Burger $21, which is prepared using a Beyond Burger patty, roasted onions, tomato, cheese, lettuce, pickles, mayo, mustard, and served with a side of truffle fries. Completely vegan, but so tantalisingly ‘meaty’ in taste!
Their Vegetarian Lasagne $28 is baked with mushrooms, spinach, onion, zucchini, capsicum, tomato, mozzarella, basil, and parmesan. It’s raining cheeses! We felt the cheese was slightly overpowering, but the lasagne definitely scores points with us for retaining the texture and familiarity of a good ‘ol lasagne (even with no meat inside!)
The Bosco Misto $29 is made up of two spinach, feta and tofu patties stacked atop of each other. They’re coated with almonds and sesame, served with asparagus and a mushroom plum sauce. This was a winner for many of us. The patties were just the right kind of tender, and the mushroom plum sauce went so well with them. If you’re a fan of tofu patties, then you’d enjoy this one!
Last but not least are the desserts! We tried two. The first was a vegan option, Apple Crumble Served with Coconut Ice Cream $14.
The dessert that warmed my heart was the Chocolate Lava Cake Served with Vanilla Ice Cream $12. It’s warm, crumbly and went well with the vanilla ice cream!
Original Sin
Blk 43 #01-62 Jalan Merah Saga Holland Village, Chip Bee Gardens Singapore 278115
Tel : +65 6475 5605
Daily: 11.30am – 2.30pm, 6.00pm – 10.30pm
Website: http://www.originalsin.com.sg/
That’s all for the Green Monday campaign in Singapore! Let’s continue to do our part by raising awareness for vegan options – that they’re not as “restricted” as one may think. They’re definitely not bland, nor boring. If anything, Green Monday has taught us that vegan food can be as approachable and creative as the meat-based foods we’re so used to. The quest for hunting down awesome vegan food has officially begun!
Website: http://greenmonday.org/sg-restaurant-programme/
Images and write up by @chowbaccas
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