Just over a year ago, Locavore NXT opened its “more than a restaurant” doors, surprising guests from all over the world with their creative genius in pushing boundaries of how our relationship with food can nurture nature.
Their commitment to sustainable practices doesn’t seem like an easy feat. However, they’ve found innovative ways of incorporating sustainable ways that propelled them to an “almost zero waste” fine-dining restaurant. Even with a sprawling 5,000-square-meter area that can accommodate 120 guests and about 100-200 kitchen staff, they have a mission to achieve a truly sustainable establishment.
As a handsome accolade as Locavore NXT celebrates its first anniversary, they have won the Ethical & Sustainability Award 2025 by La Liste, a global restaurant and hotel guide. This is a testament to their ingenuity in sustainability, recognizing the efforts of owners and chefs Eelke Plasmeijer and Ray Adriansyah and their team, to now become a “98.13% waste-free restaurant, with just 1.87% of waste from Locavore NXT ending up in landfills,” a figure, they say, are continuously working hard to reduce.
“We’re honored to be awarded the Ethical & Sustainability Award 2025 by La Liste in our first year of opening. This award recognizes restaurants with exemplary dedication to ethical practices, sustainability, and social responsibility,” Chef Ray shares.
Chef Eelke shares how ethical and sustainable practices are not easy to integrate in their newly built restaurant, but their strong identity is what drives them to continue with this path.
“The journey hasn’t been without its challenges and learning curves, but it’s a path that feels right for us and one we’re proud to take,’ he shares.
The Locavore NXT space is an experience of its own, with three floors of different immersive spaces, all with a specific function, starting from the entrance, which feels like a space where someone is welcoming to their home.
The path from the cabin to the restaurant kept me curious, with geometric walls seemed like an entrance to a labyrinth, opening up to a view of the rice fields. As they first opened for dinner, I was welcomed by the mystical gradient of soft lavender to deep violet during sunset. This sets the stage for what is about to come—the entrance to the 360 bar—with a massive banana tree that provides a natural center piece to its modern interiors.
An intricately carved Balinese door opens up to the dining area, then down to the dimly-lit basement where the mushroom chamber is housed, moving on to the interactive bio-lab, a library of all the 473 local ingredients they use.
The experience continues to the open kitchen and to the dining area, where more than 20 chefs plus kitchen staff rummage around preparing the evening fares. I was led to one side of the kitchen where amuse bouche was served.
The floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the dining room offered a complimentary backdrop to the extraordinary dishes served at Locavore NXT. While servings of meat, poultry, and seafood were kept to a minimum, highlighting local ingredients such as jengkol or “dog fruit,” seaweed, mushroom, and local nuts and seeds like kluwak, are just among the local ingredients featured from across Indonesia.
This season, they’ve recently launched their “Nature’s Compass” tasting menu that highlights their efforts in the Fermentation Department, headed by Lisa Sibagariang, who have spent months experimenting with kitchen scraps and seasonal ingredients, turning what would some consider as “waste” into something entirely new and interesting.
An amazing “food garden” and apiary for beekeeping are found on the Locavore NXT rooftop, as well as solar panels that supply a large percentage of the energy used on-site. A designated Circular Waste Centre is also within the property, where waste is separated and repurposed, ensuring very little of our waste ends up in landfills.
Deep down in the basement is the Worm Sewage Treatment Plant where more than 20,000 worms go to work on everything that gets flushed, including greywater from the kitchen sinks. The resulting material is used as natural fertiliser and irrigation.
Proving that a world with minimal waste is possible with a strong will to go against the norms and being tenacious in finding ways to achieve a waste-free establishment that supports the Indonesia that we love, they truthfully are “A Localised Rebellion”
Locavore NXT aims to be “the best restaurant we can, being a light on the planet as possible and doing our part to make this part of the world a better place,” Chef Eelke declares.
