Delivered to Your Doorstep: Healthy Alternatives to Food We Love
Jakarta. In a perfect world, we'd be able to eat all our favorite foods non-stop. Sadly, refined sugars, preservatives and saturated fats put a right stop to that. But, as they say, nothing looks as good as healthy feels. Here are three delicious local healthy fares that can be delivered right to your doorstep and, as a bonus, won't book you a trip to the hospital.
1. Homeroots.id
Goodbye bland healthy fares, Homeroots.id is here. When founders Enrica Tirtaputra and Cilia Limantara met at work in 2015, they soon found out they shared a passion for cooking and living a healthy life.
Enrica told Cilia about the superfood trends in Los Angeles where she lived for a while, and how she noticed that many traditional foods in Indonesia actually use the same ingredients.
"Turmeric latte was such a big thing in LA, so were coconut milk and coconut oil. When I came back here I realized, oh wow, those things have been around here forever. I grew up eating soto ayam [chicken soup], which has turmeric-based broth, and santan [coconut milk]," Enrica said.
This was the lightbulb moment when Enrica and Cilia realized they can make healthy food with Indonesian superfood ingredients.
Starting out as a blog, Homeroots.id started selling foods in November 2017.
"For now, we cook everything ourselves, just the two of us. Yes, it's a lot of work," Enrica said.
The Homeroots.id site has both Western and Indonesian healthy recipes, but their shop only sells Indonesian meals.
"What really stands out from our brand is the family recipes. We want everything to feel homemade, to taste like home. Each dish has a story behind it," Cilia said.
One of Homeroots.id's bestsellers is its Rawon Bowl.
Rawon is a strong-tasting beef soup with a black-colored broth. The dish originates in East Java. Its main seasoning, keluak (black nuts), gives it its distinct flavor and dark color.
The soup is typically served with a side of rice, boiled bean sprouts and whole salted egg.
Homeroots.id's rawon has the bean sprouts cooked with the salted egg, and replaces the traditional beef slices with hearty meatballs tightly packed with flavors.
A small container of the black rawon soup is provided to mix into the rice, which is a combination of red rice and corn grains.
The mouth-watering thin film of oil atop the soup in normal rawon is missing but in exchange you get a satisfying, guilt-free meal.
Homeroots.id also does desserts and is there anything more Indonesian in a dessert than the humble banana?
The shop does a mean banana bread with palm sugar. The banana smell is strong on this one, which indicates they don't skimp on the fruit.
The taste is not too sweet and the bread is moist and dense. The palm sugar crust on top adds the perfect Indonesian touch.
"We say to people we serve 'Indonesian food with a twist' instead of 'healthy Indonesian food' because that scares people away. Our goal is to show people that eating healthy shouldn't be expensive, and it shouldn't be flavorless either," Enrica said.
How to order: available on Go-Food - 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. (Monday-Friday)
2. Elevate Bakery
This new bakery is a one-stop-shop for vegan (no egg or dairy) and gluten-free cakes and bread.
Founder and baker Lydia Wiranata has been sharing her love for plant-based food and drinks in Jakarta for three years now.
Elevate started as a juicery. When Lydia branched out into baking, she used leftover pulps from the fruits to make her cakes and bread.
Lydia said she uses vegetables, fruits and some superfoods (flaxseeds, goji berries, walnuts, cinnamon) in her bread and cakes.
Lydia went gluten-free to cure her life-long digestive problems. After much experimentation, she came to the conclusion that a plant-based and gluten-free diet was the best for her.
But Jakarta, the land of deep-fried floury things, is not exactly an easy place to go gluten-free.
Elevate Bakery was Lydia's solution for this conundrum.
"I am a pescetarian [does not eat meat but eats fish] and on a gluten-free diet. I want to cater for people like me," Lydia said.
Elevate Bakery is best known for its vegan Pullapart Breads in flavors ranging from sweet potato to pink dragonfruit, black charcoal, milk tea or taro, and its Banana Breads.
For its Indonesian-inspired cakes, Lydia uses a lot of pandan. The plant’s leaves are used to add a distinct, sweet aroma and flavor to her desserts.
One of Lydia's best-selling desserts is the Klepon cake, a modern take on a famous Indonesian dessert that usually comes as green rice balls with palm sugar filling.
How to order: WhatsApp +628-151-900-1652
3. The Betawi Salad
Since it opened in April last year, The Betawi Salad has been making a name as a new age, modern health food bar with a penchant for Indonesian flavors.
The shop uses premium organic ingredients, which have the added advantage of actually tasting good and help the three founders of the shop convince customers that a salad could be a tasty, filling meal.
At The Betawi Salad, konjac is used in their firm, gelatinous Shirataki rice and noodles, which have almost no calories but are packed with fiber.
One of The Betawi Salad's best-sellers is the Indo-no-mie, their take on the perennial favorite Indomie instant noodle. It tastes good enough that you almost forgive it for not being the real thing.
The same goes for its Nasi Campur Bali, which uses Shirataki rice cooked in coconut milk and tastes almost authentic.
It's served with the typical five Nasi Campur side dishes (chicken betutu, tempe orek, Balinese lawar [salad] and sliced omelet) that you sometimes wonder which part of it is supposed to be healthy.
How to order: available on Go-Food - 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. (Monday-Sunday)
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