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back to the climate conversations with me julie you. It's no secret that the meat industry is a big polluter research shows that if cows were a nation would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter every bite of the burger boost harmful greenhouse gasses. And yet one of life's greatest pleasures for some is sinking our teeth into a juicy burger. We know swapping to plant based meats would produce 90% fewer harmful emissions than regular beef burgers. Yes, 90%. There's
a big business opportunity. And over the years a range of companies have sprung up offering plant based meats. The big hitters are impossible. Foods and beyond meat were valued at billions today. Yet there's space for smaller players catering to local tastes. The love handle? A local brand aims to be Asia's first plant based butcher with the largest curation of plant based meats, dairy and condiments that the business case is strong.
But what would convince a meat eating population to switch to meatless alternatives and how does a chef deal with cooking a beef wellington without the beef with me in the studio today is celebrity chef and co founder of love handle at least 10 minutes. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
You know, a plant based butcher is quite an oxymoron, isn't it? To say the least your meat loving friends dismiss you off hand. What's your go to line when that happens
man, I have so many friends and usually when I tell him that I run a plant based butcher, they're like firstly, what the heck is it? And secondly I'm never going there. It's almost normal for me to get that sort of feedback. But because I have beers in my shop, people come anyway and when they come they're like, oh, you know, it's something to eat. So they start with like fries for example, right, fries is naturally vegan, right?
But then we have nuggets on our menu and then they tried the nuggets and they're like, oh my
God,
this doesn't taste like it's plant based, right? And then they slowly progress and they go through the whole menu and they're like, well this is not so bad after all,
I'm coming back here again.
Yeah, exactly. So it's usually the case and it's what we do at love handles or it's what I try to achieve. It's like a low barrier of entry for enemy lovers to want to try. Time is cuisine.
You used to love me. So tell us a bit more about love handle. How are you disrupting the food industry?
So when I first started love handle, we started as a burger joint. I only wanted to do like dirty greasy vegan burgers because back then the scene in Singapore plant based means it's healthy. It's very wholesome. It's very clean eating and I could see why that diet would throw people off and plant based whatever. So I wanted to firstly break the idea that plant based food is a certain way and then we sort of just evolved over the years, as of course, the primary scene started growing.
We sort of grew with the scene and then there were a lot of these alternative meat companies that are coming up and then they all, who would approach us and they're like, hey, can you take my product, here's some samples. So I ended up with a bunch of samples in my fridge, it was overcrowding my freezer and I was like, okay, I have all these products, what can I do with it? So the idea of opening a plant based butcher showcasing different alternatives and just
give that kind of options to the general public. We were sort of filling up a gap. If you go to like your supermarkets in Singapore now, you see maybe a standard range of products, right? It's usually less than a handful of different brands, but if you come to a shop then you have the whole curated butcher display.
What are we talking about here? What kind of range
man talking about? Like chicken, We're talking about beef, steak, we have rundown that's prepared and ready to go. We have sausages, we have minced meat, we have wellington, we make in house sauces, mayonnaise.
So I wonder who your customers are, Are they mostly vegans, vegetarians full on meat eaters looking for alternatives.
So I think this is where it gets really interesting because we've never really marketed ourselves as vegan actually vegan is a word we try not to use if anything, we just say plant based, right? So if a table of four comes in, usually it's one vegan or two mos the rest of the gates are just meat eaters. I think it's a place where vegans and non vegans can come together and have a good meal and not feel like they're missing out on their meat because you know how many meters b like I need
my protein any mind or my steak. So when you come to love and you don't feel like eating plants basically,
that's interesting. So why do regulars keep coming back and what are the most important factors that consumers look for when choosing alternative meat products?
I think the first thing is taste, it was washed down to, does it taste good? Of course we can't really call it chicken. If it doesn't taste like chicken, but if it tastes good then people will eat it. And I think that's the main thing that we focus on love handle. And also I feel white people keep coming back. It's because they don't feel like we are pushy or greenwashing anybody. But for us it's really just about the food.
It's really just about convenience allowing you to bring back your meat from the butcher and cook it at home cooking for your family or for your vegan girlfriend or whatever it
is this pricing issue.
Well, yes, but I believe as the demand goes up, supply goes up and price will drop, but we're not even that pricey right now. I would compare us with premium meats, definitely not the meat you get in your wet market, but if you go to like Uber's or whatever butchery, right, we're priced about the same
as I understand. The majority of your products have been developed in house over the years. How do you recreate meat? Not just any meat, but tasty meat that looks and feels like it without involving animals. And how are they made of? Exactly.
Technology has sort of advanced over the years, five years ago, six years ago. If you ask someone to eat a vegetarian meal, it's pretty hard and it's pretty gross because your local vegetarian stores, I mean some people like it but it's very just like it's gluten and it's whatever. But now because of this technology, there's like high moisture extrusion. There is different kinds of products or techniques to recreate this texture, like tvp textured vegetable protein from soy.
People use cognac to make seafood. So I think it's a lot of creativity and these products are actually already out there. It's just that now with technology we can sort of play around with the texture and make it as close to rumi as possible and then the flavoring, it all just comes. Usually for me, I try to think of a dish that I want to make for example, chicken, rice, I think about the texture of the chicken. I think about
the flavor of the chicken. Okay, well what can I put in this meat that makes it feel like chicken rice
science is fascinating. So
it's science. It's flavor is a lot of R. And D. We make a pastrami and love handle. And it's made with jackfruit, it's made of raw jackfruit because jackfruit has a very fibrous texture and young jackfruit doesn't have any flavor. So you just get the texture and just put whatever flavor you have. So that's like almost 20 ingredients in the pastrami. But everything is ingredients that you know ingredients that you
can find in your supermarket. It's interesting. And we made like 12 versions of it, the first one we thought it was good that people taste, it was bad. And then we went back and we did it again and I thought it's sort of good and we got some feedback and they're like no bro it's bad. So we just kept going back to the drawing board and now we are like okay this should be it. People coming to us and telling us good things about this pastrami.
You
know it definitely takes time
and I wonder if there are necessarily healthier in terms of calories, cholesterol nutritional value. Can I eat your plant based cheese burger every day.
Well we would say have everything in moderation.
Well
I believe in the plant based scene. Just like any other cuisine, there are healthy stuff and then they are delicious and greasy stuff. Same with the plant based cuisine, right? You have your healthy options, your salads or raw vegan diet or whatever. But who's to say that there can't be a greasy delicious plant based meal. So we're on that side of the spectrum though, we still use of course whole foods and we use whole vegetables and we have cleaner
eating dishes. But I mean that's not one of about,
we're going for a show break, we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Stephen share and I host the new season of our podcast heart of the matter, join me in getting right to the heart of the headlines as we speak with experts and newsmakers to delve deep into the most talked about news developments, look out for our episodes wherever you get your podcast as a chef. Is it a whole other sort of ordeal trying to prep marinade and cook with plant based meat?
I think it just takes a lot of experience and a lot of patients working with plant based meat. You throw everything you know out the window because nothing works that way, right, Whatever you learn in school, whatever you picked up three years, I had to set a clear my mind
and relearn handling these plant based products of course. Then there's some basics right of marination and like making sauces, but you're just constantly looking for substitutes even with soy milk, can I use the soy milk that has less fat or more fat. Should I be using a different kind of milk for this from my jesus et cetera? You need to have a lot of patients to figure out which product works best for whatever you want to do. All
right, so I'm a south korean. I love my korean barbecue fried chicken, but I'm not the best cook out there. So do you think it's something that I can and we want to whip up at home?
Oh, definitely
give us some examples. What can I try,
man? I'm working on a fried chicken right
now. How's that going?
Well, I did it yesterday. I mean I didn't know I was going to be having this interview with you today, talking about fried chicken, but some friends came over yesterday and I just so happen to have this fried chicken on my hands and I was like, yo you wanna try these fried chicken? It looks exactly like fried chicken
drumsticks and everything.
It's like chicken breast. So you know the crispy skin, it's like a buttermilk chicken, right? They had it and they were like, yo I can't even tell that it's not me like that really gets me going if chefs and bartenders there coming to your place and yeah, eating this stuff and they give the stamp of approval, then you're like, okay, you're golden, right, this is all you need is who you need to impress right? The industry people so that the other guys when they come
through they know what we're doing. You know what we're about.
You were a major player and the plant based food scene in Singapore. Tell us about how your plant based journey started.
Okay so I've always been cooking like meat stuff right? And then about 67 years ago I started being a restaurant called Harvest. We were doing like modern vegan cuisine. I saw that there was a market because the primary scene in bali was opening the scene in U. K. Was coming and always start coming from the kitchen whenever somebody walks in and ask for vegan options it's usually always like an afterthought we just try to whip something up in the kitchen put a bunch of salad together.
Some weird dressing and here so I know from the other side of being in the kitchen that nobody really cares about being in food. So I wanted to have a place where vegans and non vegans can come together and have a good meal and that has always been my go since I started cooking plant based food. That's where it started man like for me I don't
like being super exclusive. I think for me it's really about community and I think it's sad that for example I'm vegan and you're not vegan and the rest of us here they're not vegans and you guys have to either cater to me or I'll have my dinner at home and I'll come out and meet you, which is quite sad. Right? So if you have a place where everybody just come together and have a good meal and it's about the community, it's about the vibes and
and I know you're also passionate about the environment, ethical treatment of animals and food security. Why do they matter to you personally?
I think the past two years has really, I guess changed my mindset a little bit before that. I wasn't really like sustainable man. It's hard recycling. Sometimes it can be a chore, right? But since the pandemic, I think my mindset has changed a little bit because we're talking a lot about food security now in Singapore, right? We've all experienced the past two years. Borders being closed. People are afraid of what are we going to eat? Food prices are rising because important is difficult.
I think Singapore has to be self sustainable in one way or another. And if we can't have more land to grow our own stuff, then plant based meat is the next best thing. It's something that we're producing in Singapore, it's something that we have the resources to do it here. I think that's why it's important whether or not it becomes a staple in the next few years, we don't know, but as long as more people are open to the idea that actually I can have a Prime Ismaeel.
So when you talk to her like a chef's or other people in that F and B circle is there sort of that shift in mindset?
For sure. For sure. I got lucky because I started cooking plum babies like 6, 7 years ago. But now if you don't have a plan based item on your menu, you'll get a bad review just because you don't have a plan based item on the menu, which is to be honest, pretty crazy. But I think also it's a ship in the right direction. My friends now that an industry to ask me like bro, how do you do this, what do you use in substitute of butter?
I think I just got really lucky but it's also good to see a lot of chefs trying to take on cooking plant based stuff
and the alternative protein movement isn't really limited to just meet many of your peers have been working on other animal like free versions of seafood, dairy products and also even pet food. How do you see the competition sort of shaping up for Love handle. How are you trying to stay ahead?
I think Love handle is in a very unique position because we are very consumer facing a lot of these brands, they usually focus a lot on commercial. So working with restaurants and hotels for us, we focus on direct to consumer because we have a brand, we have certain kind of street cred so consumers trust us and these manufacturers trust us in what we do. So we're in a sweet spot, we wouldn't call them our competitors because eventually we still need
to work together and grow this community. You know, I wouldn't say we have competitors. Also not saying that we're the only ones that are doing this with this manufacturers and new brands coming up. We're always trying to build an inclusive community. We have different collaborations, were throwing like a street party and we're getting all these plant based people to come down and
collaborate and show their support. So I wouldn't say it's competition, but it's just really growing the community together.
That's interesting. So I would like to ask, what advice then would you give to an emerging startup who has a vision like you do to transform the sector,
man, I need something, I tell myself all the time, we have to basically stay hungry and not settle for whatever it is you have Now people are always trying to look for the next best thing, but there's just so many boundaries to break in this plant based scene, if everyone is doing the same thing, like everyone is sort of, oh, there's this new technology and then everyone goes into this new technology, but that's like a whole spectrum, this whole world of other stuff
that's not either been discovered yet or somebody is doing it on the down low and no one knows about it. I think the more diverse everybody gets trying to achieve their own goals instead of trying to be at the same place together. I think that helps the scene.
What's next for love handle? What does success look like for you when it comes to getting more foodies to go meatless?
Well, so the goal has always been kind of have love handle in every major city. That's what we taught ourselves when we started that of course, still stays right. We want to be asset light, so we don't want to open too many shops in the city or whatever.
But I think at least for me being in three different countries, having a showroom there and being someone of an influence to whatever city or country that we're in, I think that is success for me, as long as we are pushing people towards the right direction, as long as there are people walking through a love handle and being open to try plant based food. I think that's success for me, man, wow,
What an exciting vision and mission. I wish you the best of luck it is.
Thank you. Thanks for having
me.
Well,
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