Café Lohas, a training restaurant under the LOHAS Garden of the Spastics Association of Hong Kong, offers hands-on catering training for persons with disabilities. As a three-star ESR under the “EatSmart Restaurant Star+” Campaign, Café Lohas is also dedicated to promoting healthy eating. At Café Lohas, instructors and trainees work together to develop “EatSmart Dishes” with an aim of bringing customers healthy dishes with new flavours.

According to Ms Vicky Lee, Superintendent of Café Lohas, the regular briefing sessions organised by the Department of Health (DH) help restaurants interested in becoming ESRs understand how to provide “EatSmart Dishes” in their actual operation. These sessions allow them to take the first step in becoming “EatSmart Restaurants” at ease.

Healthy Western Dishes to Attract Customers and Surprise Their Taste Buds

When being asked why Café Lohas specialises in light Western dishes, Ms Lee admitted that the restaurant has to meet the market demand. She explained, “Crispy and tasty foods are always popular even though some of them are regarded as unhealthy.” Café Lohas stands out from the crowd because it successfully presents dishes perceived to be relatively unhealthy in a completely different way. The “Cauliflower Burger with Cheese and Portobello Mushroom” is an example of a tasty and healthy dish designed by the restaurant.

Ms Lee said that instructors and trainees are always enthusiastic in adopting delicious foods they have tried elsewhere as the blueprints for creating new dishes. As burger is the favourite dish of many trainees, the instructors decided to create a healthy burger. After the recipe was finalised, they taught the trainees the cooking steps patiently. It turned out to be a distinctive and appealing healthy dish, in which finely chopped cauliflower, oatmeal and egg white are mixed and kneaded into the shape of burger buns, then slightly pan-fried to become a cauliflower patty. With fillings of cheese, egg, romaine lettuce, tomato and portobello mushrooms, the burger is healthy and nutritious. This dish not only became the champion of the “3 Less” dish category in the “EatSmart Recipe Competition 2021” organised by the DH, but also proved that Café Lohas is forward-looking and keeping up with the trend when designing the “EatSmart Dishes”.

Tasty and Healthy Homemade Dressings

In general, typical Western dressings are high in fat and sodium. In view of this, Café Lohas formulates its own homemade dressings. The sweet and sour mayonnaise of the ‘Mayonnaise Pasta Salad’ is prepared with fresh lemon juice. The dressing is served separately so that customers can adjust the amount of dressing by themselves. This makes the salad well-received by health-conscious customers.

Ms Lee concluded that Café Lohas has positioned itself as a healthy restaurant. Moving forward, she hopes that instructors and trainees will continue to develop more healthy and delicious dishes together.