Locavore, Ubud
Locavore reshaped Bali's fine dining around hyper-local Indonesian produce. The original room closed in 2022; the kitchen now lives on as Locavore NXT and the plant-forward Herbivore in Ubud.
Locavore was the restaurant that taught Bali to take its own vegetables seriously. In a converted Ubud shophouse a short walk off Jalan Dewi Sita, the kitchen of Eelke Plasmeijer and Ray Adriansyah built a 16-course tasting menu out of fern tips, jicama, palm sugar and gula merah, alongside the sort of plant-only run that made a parallel menu feel like the lead rather than a courtesy. Vegetables were burnt, fermented, steamed in banana leaf, pickled and sometimes left almost alone, and the dining-room argument was always the same: this island has more flavour in its weeds than most kitchens have in their pantries.
The original Locavore closed in December 2022 after eleven years, and the team rebuilt the project at a new address as Locavore NXT, with the same hyper-local sourcing and a longer, more research-driven tasting format. In the old Dewi Sita space they opened Herbivore, an entirely plant-forward sister concept that distils the lineage into one short, sharp menu. Both still trade on the same principle: that anything good enough to eat in Bali can be grown, foraged or fished within reach of the kitchen door.
If you arrive in Ubud planning to eat at “Locavore”, the question is now which Locavore. Book NXT for the long, technical, omnivore-friendly evening; book Herbivore for the leaner, plant-only expression of the same intelligence. Either way, this is the kitchen that argued vegetables didn’t need to imitate meat to earn the centre of the plate, and it has been quietly correct ever since.
