Top 10 Eco-friendly Café & Restaurants in Southeast Asia

Along with the development of sustainable travel, the standards of an excellent restaurant are not only the condition of cleanliness but also the environmentally friendly status. Actually, more and more people are willing to pay higher for a “green” meal at an eco-friendly restaurant, where the policies of green food offerings, natural resources conversation, pollution reduction and even sustainable interior decoration are operated in the eco-friendly standards.

In Southeast Asia, the trend of sustainable and responsible restaurants is increasingly popular and attracts thousands of domestic and foreign tourists. It’s vital for a responsible traveler to choose the most environmentally friendly way of traveling. Here’re the 10 most eco-friendly café and restaurants in Southeast Asia for you to minimize the environmental impacts of tourism on your favorite destinations in specific and on the Earth in general.

1. Eleven One Kitchen, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Monday – Sunday: 7 am – 9:30 pm

Considered the first option of eco-friendly restaurants in Southeast Asia, Eleven One Kitchen is a must-try restaurant while traveling to Cambodia. At first, the interior decoration will help you make you feel the fresh and green atmosphere filled with different-sized plant pots. Then, you’ll experience an eco-friendly meal with no MSG, a package with biodegradable boxes, and drinks with only bamboo straws instead of plastic ones.

Eleven One Kitchen is an option of eco-friendly restaurants in Southeast Asia

As the slogan quote saying “Eat Healthy, Stay Wealthy, Care for the environment”, Eleven One Kitchen not only cares for customers’ health but also initiates a rare environmental business in Southeast Asia. You can choose between 2 branches which are located in Toul Tom Pong and Beong Keng Kong streets, Phnom Penh. Thanks to the eco-friendly policy, all food in Eleven One Kitchen is grown locally and bought directly from the farmers. You can try both Khmer and Western food here.

Eleven One Kitchen offers eco-friendly dishes

2. Open Farm Community, Tanglin, Singapore

Monday – Friday: 12 pm – 4 pm; 6 pm – 11 pm (open till 12 am on Fridays)

Saturday – Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm; 6 pm – 12 am (close at 11 pm on Sundays)

The restaurant in Open Farm Community (OFC) will give you the most eco-friendly dining experience in Southeast Asia. You’d expect an unforgettable meal in a rustic greenhouse building at the end of the plot serving as a dining room and open kitchen. The restaurant has turned the surrounding grounds into plots for greens like lemon balm, rosemary, and dill for the kitchen. What an Aussie vineyard-like experience of seeing farmers hunched over and fiddling with plants outdoor in OFC.

Open Farm Community offer the most eco-friendly dining experience in Southeast Asia

The menu of this unique eatery is as organic as its establishment. If you don’t want something ‘green’, you can try other dishes like fried cauliflower wings, crispy frog legs, and laksa pappardelle. Even when you eat out, you’re saving the earth by limiting "low carbon footprint" and supporting such eco-business in Southeast Asia.

Caramelized mango with textures of coconut in OFC

3. Hidden Gem Coffee, Hanoi, Vietnam

Monday – Sunday: 8 am – 11 pm

Established as a recycled café, Hidden Gem Coffee is a quaint and eco-friendly café everyone should try while in the Hanoi Old Quarter. The owners want to inspire customers with the awareness on ‘reducing, reusing & recycling’ waste in every place they visit. Once walked into Hidden Gem Coffee, you’ll feel a whimsical and anime-esque Technicolor experience. From the entrance door, the wall paintings, the sculptures to the furniture, all contribute to this one-of-a-kind café.

The recycling theme of Hidden Gem Coffee

Hidden Gem Coffee is one of the rare eco-friendly coffee shops in Southeast Asia using recycled materials for everything. The café serves unique, authentic, and remarkable Hanoian coffee, drinks, and food. You must try coconut coffee in summer or egg coffee on winter days. This is also a tranquil place to work or just let your hair down in the incredible atmosphere.

4. Green Light Café and Bar, Koh Samui, Thailand

Monday – Sunday: 8 am – 10 pm

Green Light Café and Bar lies at the top eco-friendly vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Koh Samui, where you’ll find a wide selection of healthy and gluten-free dishes made from local organic ingredients including many grown in the on-site garden. Even the staff members can show you around by a garden tour to see how the vegetables are raised.

At Green Light, you’ll immerse in a cozy and forward-thinking space where the locals and tourists can gather and share ideas. Developing as a community, Green Light Café and Bar focus on the main goals as social responsibility, self-sufficiency, and reduction of their carbon footprint.     

Green Light Café and Bar lies at the top eco-friendly vegan restaurants in Southeast Asia   

5. Maison Marou, Sai Gon/ Hanoi, Vietnam

Monday – Sunday: 9 am – 10 pm

Maison Marou is a perfect place to find the authentic taste of Vietnamese chocolate. Maison’s business has created their own manufacture which controls everything, from the beans they select at the locally green source to the bars they sell in chocolate shops. Marou’s chocolate has a specific complexity and variability offering unusual aromas of the best chocolate than ever.

Maison Marou is a fantastic eco-friendly chocolate café in Southeast Asia

Maison Marou is a fantastic eco-friendly chocolate café that you can’t find anywhere in Southeast Asia. In addition to the unique savory of food and drinks, Maison Marou offers green delivery by providing biodegradable wrapping or plastic-free delivery; green kitchen by reducing single-use plastic as well as managing waste and disposable food. If you say no to plastic straws, plastic bags, and plastic bottles, Maison Marou is a good choice because of eliminated plastic straws in dine-in and take-out. There’re two branches of Maison Marou in Saigon and Hanoi that you can experience a distinctive eco-friendly café in Southeast Asia.

6. Highlands Coffee, Vietnam

Monday – Sunday: 7 am – 10 pm or 11 pm

Highlands Coffee has developed as the most successful coffee shop chain and distributor of coffee products in Vietnam. Established in 1998, Highlands Coffee has operated nearly 100 coffee shops in six large cities and provinces across Vietnam until now.

Along with the various choices of coffee and drinks, Highland Coffee attracts numerous customers to its eco-friendly campaigns. Every customer bringing their own bottle or cup to the coffee shop will have a chance to upsize the ordered drinks. It’s good to see that there is an increasing number of people who reckon their responsibility for environmentally friendly behaviors.

Highland Coffee attracts numerous customers to its eco-friendly campaigns

7. The Grotto, Krabi, Thailand

Monday – Sunday: 12 pm – 8 pm

Situated at the 5-star Rayavadee Resort in Krabi, The Grotto is an eco-friendly restaurant giving you an opportunity to enjoy a dinner tucked inside a cave. Known as Cave Dining, the restaurant offers the most romantic and luxurious dining out on the beach of Thailand. It’s perfect to feel soft sand under your feet and savor the restaurant’s specialty including seafood barbecue, which is being prepared on several special nights every week.

The Grotto is an eco-friendly option to enjoy cave dining in Southeast Asia

Most of the ingredients are sourced from Hilltribe Organics and other organic sources from the rural areas in Thailand. Aside from environmental friendliness, The Grotto and the entire resort work with various fair trade initiatives, social enterprises, and charities. One Thai baht is donated to the Thailand-based Food4Good charity for every meal ordered at the restaurant.

8. Verde Kitchen, the Central Area, Singapore

Monday – Saturday: 10:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Whenever you’re looking for an eco-friendly restaurant in Singapore, Verde Kitchen will meet your need of sustainable food offerings, cozy space, and appetizingly healthy dishes. Located on Level 2 of Hilton Singapore on Orchard Road, Verde Kitchen brings about a new balance to organic and healthy diet to customers. From the Penang Assam Laksa to the Organic Basil-crusted Tooth Fish, all will satisfy your cravings for ‘green taste’.

Verde Kitchen, an eco-friendly restaurant in the Central Area of Singapore

Beyond compromising on taste, Verde Kitchen promotes a greener future with a “NO” list honoring the intention of the eatery. Furthermore, each item entering the green kitchen has to contain no man-made fertilizers, pesticides, GMO’s, additives, or hormones. Definitely, Verde Kitchen is a perfect option for your support to the environment’s health and society’s benefit.

'Green taste' of environmentally friendly dishes at Verde Kitchen

9. Foreword Coffee, Singapore

Monday – Friday: 8 pm – 4 pm

If you’re seeking a variety of freshly roasted Asian coffee beans or purchase eco-friendly reusable items, Foreword Coffee is a great destination. The coffee shop has been promoted sustainable consumption and raised awareness on an environmentally friendly stance. All drinks of Foreword Coffee are served without straws, but the shop does give paper straws upon request.

Besides, Foreword Coffee offers customers who bring their own cups a 10% discount on drinks. And if you want to become a reusable straw convert, the café also sells metal straws in Stainless Steel and Rose Gold at stores. So, coming to Foreword Coffee, you’ll support the earth-saving and reduce carbon footprint during your eco-friendly vacation in Southeast Asia.

The sustainability project of Foreword Coffee

10. Eden Eco Village, Kampot, Cambodia

Monday – Sunday: 7 am – 10 pm

Just a short ride outside Kampot, the Eden Eco Village is a collection of bamboo and thatch bungalows on stilts, most of them right over the water. Especially, each unit generates its own solar power for lights and fans. Spending a short trip to the eco-friendly resort of Kampot, life here is a great getaway from bustling cities: riverside yoga in the morning, kayaking or dips in the river, natural treatments in the spa, and the spectacle of fireflies at night.

Bungalows at Eden Eco Village

The restaurants here offer responsible tourists a wide range of eco-friendly options. Most of the produce is local and the site grows its own mangoes. It recycles and composts everything it can, including the waste of the compost toilets for fertilizer.

All in all, Southeast Asia gives tourists various selections of environmentally friendly café and restaurants across the region. Giving our top 10 eco-friendly recommendations a try, you will indirectly become a part of environment-saving action. Come exploring Southeast Asia with BestPrice Travel.

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Hong Nhung

(Images source: Internet)