THE PUNCH INTERVIEWS
Meet Eka, head chef at Buahan, A Banyan Tree Escape
Developed thoughtfully over decades and through the pandemic, this brand extension symbolizes Banyan Tree brand’s vision to creating immersive experiences combining deep nature and sustainable design.
What is your story?
My name is Eka and I am the head chef of Buahan, a Banyan Tree Escape. In Bali, we have so many different kinds of food that involve community. My passion for cooking came from my mom. She taught me Balinese culture and community from learning to cook with her. It was what inspired my love for cooking and love to become a chef.
I started my career in the hotel industry as a steward and learned how people work in a professional kitchen. At the beginning of my career, I learned from a French chef who taught me more about fine dining techniques. I became inspired to combine local ingredients and food into modern cuisine through fine dining techniques.
What is your story at Buahan?
Buahan is a very tropical village and has a big source of fresh vegetables, fruits, wild plants, and herbs. As an original native of Buahan, I always wanted to come back to my village and help my local community maximize all natural resources and ingredients.
That’s when I met Puspa, our resort manager. She told me about Buahan, a Banyan Tree Escape, and offered me a position to join the team. I agreed and began working here in April 2021.
Can you tell us more about your culinary specialties?
I love highlighting all the ingredients that we source locally from our farmers in Buahan.
I also love maximizing the ingredients, for example, when the farmers harvest a lot of overripe bananas, we take all the bananas and process it. We make kombucha, liquor, jam, and ice cream from those bananas. We also love to share the final product with our local community and farmers so they too can appreciate the value of quality ingredients.
How do you cook for a luxury hotel in a sustainable way?
In Buahan, we are committed to local ingredients. We source all our ingredients within 40 km around Buahan. We don’t import anything from outside of Buahan, as we try to emphasize our local ingredients through creative recipes with creative techniques.
First, we maximize our ingredients by using a slow cooking process. Because most of the fruits and vegetables in Buahan are seasonal, we develop some recipes using fermentation techniques. The fermentation process transforms the character of the ingredients and elevates their original flavors with unique flavor updates. Most of our menu are plant-based dishes with Asian flavors that highlight the authenticity of Indonesian ingredients.
How can you inspire your local community to take better care of the environment?
At Buahan, we create long-term relationships with our local community to make sure they understand our point for the future. Instead of taking away from farmers, we want to give them an understanding of the importance of good quality ingredients and challenge them to make sure all those ingredients have a circular approach to sustainability.
We have also begun to develop our chemical-free fresh water system to maximize the local source, that way we don’t have to send seafood all the way from Jimbaran. We’re also developing our very own zero-waste product, an umami powder made from leftover ingredients such as vegetables and wild plants.
We also compost all our waste from our farmers, gardens, and kitchen. The maggots and larvae from our compost are used to feed the chickens. That’s how we collaborate with and empower our local farmers and local community, as a part of our sustainability.