Natural-farming fragrant rice makes Shanghai vegetable rice; Dongya Kitchen joins hands with small farmers to promote green Jiangsu-Zhejiang New Year dishes

Dongya Kitchen, which has been running for 18 years, is a pioneer of green dining in the country. After falling ill, founder Yu Bifang devoted herself to researching healthy eating and changed her past dining habits, focusing on low-temperature, reduced-sugar cooking. She personally travels all over Taiwan to find good ingredients for her dishes, insists on not opening branches in order to maintain quality, and this year launched a limited-edition green New Year menu, using local organic and eco-friendly ingredients to create delicious, nutrition-packed revised Shanghai Jiangsu-Zhejiang cuisine.

Walking in through the low-key, simple storefront, the first thing that catches the eye is the colorful fruits and vegetables. "These were all brought back from farmers markets or farms in person!" says Yu Bifang, founder of Dongya Kitchen. Bold and straightforward by nature, she grew up in a military dependents' village in Zhongli, Taoyuan. Her mother, who came from Fuzhou, was her first culinary teacher, and she learned to cook alongside her older sister in the family kitchen.

As an adult, she worked for 25 years as a food reporter for the magazine Wu Ai Wu Jia, traveling to farms and distinctive restaurants all over the country, tasting all kinds of flavors. Her outgoing personality led everyone to affectionately call her "Sister Yu."

A life crisis becomes a turning point, from rich oil and dark sauce to low temperature and reduced sugar

Besides reporting on food, she once ran a Chinese restaurant specializing in traditional Shanghai Jiangsu-Zhejiang cuisine, whose four defining features are "rich oil and dark sauce." Sister Yu explains: "The flavor and mouthfeel must be 'rich,' the cooking must use a lot of 'oil,' the color must look 'dark red,' and the seasoning must use a lot of 'sauce.' That is traditional Shanghai and Zhejiang cuisine."

Her past Chinese restaurant did extremely well. "Although everyone said it was delicious, in my heart I felt that high-heat stir-fried and deep-fried dishes were not good for the body," Yu Bifang recalls. But nearly 20 years ago she suddenly ran into a string of bad debts that wiped out most of her assets, plunging her into depression, and her health also began flashing warning signs after years of high stress and advancing age.

"I don't want to take a pile of medicine anymore. Rather than spend money on medicine, it's better to study how to eat well!" To regain her health, Yu Bifang threw herself into researching healthy eating, taking all kinds of courses, even enrolling in a natural diet course in the credit program at Taipei Medical University, and also encountering the "NEWSTART healthy lifestyle" promoted by Taiwan Adventist Hospital.

"Good food is the best medicine!" Yu Bifang brought the dietary concepts she learned into her cooking, abandoning the rich oil and dark sauce of the past and flipping to low-temperature cooking and reduced sugar. She believes low-temperature cooking can preserve the original state of ingredients, with the best nutrition and flavor, while reducing sugar means eating moderately and taking in only the nutrients needed. With this belief in food as therapy, Dongya Kitchen was born.

The boss who went overboard, and the chefs she scared away

"People in the trade use 'going overboard' to describe me." To put her philosophy into practice, Yu Bifang spared no effort visiting farms and farmers markets all over, seeking out all kinds of organic and eco-friendly ingredients. She can recite exactly where every ingredient in the store comes from, when it was planted, and how it was grown. Now customers come in an endless stream, but Dongya Kitchen did not start out smoothly.

At the beginning, in order to fully carry out her philosophy and reduce carbon emissions, Dongya Kitchen once adjusted its menu to 50% vegetable dishes, and revenue dropped by more than 30%. To keep the business going, Yu Bifang put meat back on the menu. "You can't get everything right in one step. If it can't last, how can you let more people know about these ideas?" she says firmly.

Using organic and eco-friendly ingredients makes each dish cost nearly 40% of its listed price, and difficulties also arose in the cooking. "Many traditional Zhejiang dishes use fixed, designated ingredients. To vary them with Taiwan ingredients, cook at low temperature, and reduce sugar and oil scared away a bunch of chefs." She recalls that many chefs trained in culinary school could not break out of their old cooking patterns, and quit soon after starting because they couldn't adapt.

The secret to running for 18 years: buying groceries in person, demonstrating dishes and teaching, and using seasonal and special ingredients

To balance her philosophy with the store's finances over 18 years, Yu Bifang has distilled 3 strategies: buy in person, demonstrate dishes and cultivate talent, and use seasonal ingredients flexibly in cooking. Her grocery runs range from traditional markets to farmers markets, and she will even drive to Yangmingshan to buy from small farmers. She believes buying in person lets her find the ingredients she truly needs and confirm their quality, without paying extra referral fees.

The chefs in the store are currently rather young. Sister Yu explains that young chefs are actually easier to communicate with than senior chefs and more malleable, so when developing new dishes she always demonstrates in person and spends time explaining the details and concepts of each dish to the chefs, including low-temperature cooking and whole-food cooking that reduces waste. She believes cultivating talent is the real path to sustainability for a restaurant.

In addition, ingredients in the store are generally costly. Within the framework of a fixed menu, Sister Yu varies dishes using ingredients at their seasonal peak. For example, for pickled snow cabbage she uses leafy greens in peak season, sometimes komatsuna, sometimes leaf radish, but it looks the same on the plate; in roselle season, she makes roselle side dishes. She believes seasonal ingredients are fresh and relatively affordable, and can be used to lower costs.

Because she has visited farms everywhere, Yu Bifang always sees special ingredients earlier than others. Red quinoa, jaboticaba, tree tomato and others that have risen in popularity in recent years she had already discovered more than ten years ago, and she put them into dishes at the golden moment of discovery. Now farmers will even take the high-speed rail north to bring her special ingredients to use in her cooking.