The world’s best sustainable restaurants for guilt-free dining in 2019

Temakinho started in Italy with a single location in Milan and has since expanded to Rome, London and Ibiza. It specialises in Japanese-Brazilian fusion cuisine. With a sustainability in mind since day one, Temakinho’s menu includes a wide selection of high quality fish-based dishes such as Petiscos, Tartaras, Cheviche, rolls and Temakis, as well as vegetarian menu. Temakinho sources all of the fish from sustainable fish farming and ethical fishing and officially recognized and rewarded in 2016 as the first chain of restaurants to be awarded the Friends of the Sea certification. They offer free filtered water in order not to sell plastic bottles and have officially banned plastic straws from all restaurants and replaced them with PLA alternatives, a compostable material derived from corn.

The restaurant has no plastic straw and no Styrofoam policy, using bamboo and biodegradable plastic as the substitute instead. DiMare also use banana leaf for plate underliners and make ramekins for sauces out of them. Most of the foods are locally soured while they imported items that are not available in Bali, which are raised and cultivated responsibly. They recently started a home garden consisting of seeds acquired throughout its chef’s travels and grow their own curry leaves and Jinten.

Three Blue Ducks prides itself as a place for a real food that support sustainability and ethically farmed produce. It started as a venture between friends in a humble café in Bronte, Australia and quickly became the talk of the town. Three Blue Ducks now has five other branches, including the original Bronte place, in Byron Bay and Rosebery, at W Hotel in Brisbane and the latest Locura in Byron Bay. All venues source the best quality in organic, fair-trade, local and sustainable products. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, with focus on “local produce to create dishes with a profusion of flavour”. Three Blue Duck also joined the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s Good Fish Project and committed to serve only sustainable fish species on the table, and teamed up with The Farm and Zero Mass Water to install 10 hydropanels on their Byron Bay restaurant to create water out of sunlight and the atmosphere.

The brainchild of Chef Eelke Plasmeijer and Ray Adriansyah is not just another green restaurant in Bali. Since the very beginning, Locavore has always ensure diners to have the freshest of seasonal produce and ethically fed animal’s meat. They are also working closely with local farmers to support sustainability within the community. Locavore is reducing the huge carbon footprint as over 95% of the kitchen’s ingredients are locally sourced. Their edible kitchen waste is either fed to the pigs or composted, other waste is collected by Eco Bali Recycling. Recently, Locavore has just won Asia’s sustainable Restaurant Award at Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant 2019 awards ceremony in Macau.

Eneko Atxa is the man behind the Award-winning, three Michelin starred restaurant in the Basque region of Spain, Azurmendi. Noted as one of the most sustainable dining restaurants in the world, Azurmendi offers unique experience for diners inside their bioclimatic building which is built with non-invasive methods, local and recycled materials and use cutting-edge technology for renewable energies. The journey starts from their rooftop vegetable garden where you can see their home grown produce, then continue to the indoor greenhouse for a selection of snacks and eventually seated in the dining room. Highlight on the menu including Truffled egg that is cooked inside out and edible cotton that the guests eat in the greenhouse. Azurmendi also contributes to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations that supports sustainable initiatives like promoting sustainable development in the society and implementing actions to combat climate change and its impacts.

An exceptional dining venue located in greenhouses that used to belong to a municipal nursery, De Kas offers the freshest of local ingredients with beautiful surroundings to dine at. The compound consists of six different rooms that include the restaurant, bar, business table for 6-12 people, a conservatory, patio and a garden room suitable for private dinners. De Kas grows their own vegetables, herbs and edible flowers, and supplemented by fresh seasonal produce from their own field in the Beemster region, just 10km from Amsterdam. Their menu made up of everything harvested on that day, served in small dishes as individual courses.

Open Farm Community’s mission is to connect people with the nature and celebrating the local spirit in Singapore. Sitting on a 35,000 sq ft of green-land, the restaurant focus on locally sourced, seasonal and innovative dishes helmed by Head Chef Oliver Truesdale-Jutras. Open Farm Community curates and host local farmer to showcase their produce and the restaurant also encourage growing food at underutilized spaces like rooftops as they believe it is a way to reconnect to the nature and conserve natural resources. They also use sustainable natural growing methods, resource recycling and waste minimization. Their “Edible Garden City” is the main resource of the ingredients served in the restaurant.

Located in Copenhagen, Denmark, Relae is known for its nononsense approach to fine dining by doing intelligently simple dishes with maximum flavours of just a few ingredients. Owned by established Chef Christian Puglisi, the restaurant is certified organic at the highest level of 90-100% with a gold mark as everything they buy and serve comes from farms that work in an environmentally positive manner, without the use of pesticides and other chemicals. The restaurant doesn’t sell pre-packaged bottled water, instead they use a filter system and serve the water in their empty wine bottles. All paper products they use in the restaurant and office are FSC-certified and recycled, while their organic waste is collected by a local community centre called Projekt Offside who turns the waste into compost at the nursery. Dining is served between four or seven course with vegetables as the main ingredients, with menu changes throughout the season, some highlights including Jerusalem artichoke mousse with passion fruit and coffee or fried salsify with salsify puree and bergamot.