How Ootaya Serves up Unbelievably Fresh Crisp, Pesticide-free Vegetables in Their Foods

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Just last week at Orchard Central, I was introduced to some really fresh, crisp and pesticide-free vegetable dishes at Ootoya Japanese restaurant at Orchard Central. Perhaps you may heard the words “fresh”, “crisp” and “free of pesticide” in almost all of vegetable advertisement or marketing but I tell you, the ones at Ootoya’s are the real deal and this is made possible by Panasonic’s Indoor Vegetable Farm.

Indoor Vegetable Farm? Yes, you didn’t heard it wrong. Let me introduce to you Singapore’s Self-Sufficiency Level of Vegetables with First Indoor Vegetable Farm. I won’t go all technical here; it’s basically an indoor farm for growing vegetables for human consumption.

How Panasonic Grow Their Veggies Indoors

The Agricultural Business Unit of Panasonic Factory Solutions Asia Pacific (Panasonic) is cultivating premium Japanese vegetables via a controlled soil-based environment with LED lighting. The facility is the first in Singapore to obtain an indoor farming license from the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) and grows a wide range of premium Japanese crop varieties that are pesticide-free and compliant with stringent food safety standards.

Seeding and potting are carried out in the preparation room, and the crops are then placed under white light for germination, which typically takes about 2-3 weeks depending on the type of crop.

The crops will then go under LED lighting that simulates two out of seven sunlight rays necessary for photosynthesis to take place – namely blue and red light. This artificial lighting is specially tuned for cultivation in the factory where temperature, humidity and CO2 are controlled.

Currently 3 types of vegetables are grown in the facility and 7 more types of vegetables will soon be available on the market. The 3 types are Red Leafy Lettuce, Mizuna (Potherb Mustard) and Mini Red Radish.

Food Quality, Self-Sufficiency

Hideki Baba, Managing Director, Panasonic Factory Solutions Asia Pacific, said, “Combining Panasonic’s technological and manufacturing expertise, these premium Japanese crops are grown in optimum conditions, where temperature, humidity and CO2 levels are monitored and controlled, ensuring stable, high-quality production throughout the year. The soil-based cultivation is pesticide-free and complies with AVA’s stringent food safety standards. Our indoor vegetable farm is also HACCP certified. With over 90% of the food consumed in Singapore being imported, Panasonic hopes the indoor vegetable farm can contribute to the nation’s food self-sufficiency levels and at the same time provide a better life and a better world through improved food quality.”

Ootoya Salads Using Panasonic Premium Vegetables

Coming this mid-August, Ootoya introduces salads made from vegetables are delivered fresh from Panasonic’s indoor agriculture farm to Ootoya restaurants daily. There are 4 of them and they are:

Shrimp Salad with Aurora Dressing ($4)

Mini red radish, red leafy lettuce, mizuna (potherb mustard) and shrimps, served with creamy dressing made from bell pepper and tomatoes drizzled with freshly squeezed lemon juice which enhances vegetable and shrimp flavour. The shrimps served in this salad are fresh enough to match with the vegetables.

Bonito Salad with Vegetable dressing ($5)

Mini red radish, red leafy lettuce, mizuna (potherb mustard), bonito or katsuobushi (dried, fermented, and smoked skipjack tuna, served with Ootoya’s original tangy dressing made from tiny sliced onion, bell pepper, lemon juice and olive oil.

Salad Roll with Bagna Dressing ($4)

Mini red radish, red leafy lettuce and mizuna (potherb mustard) wrapped in rice paper, served with a typical Italian style dip made from anchovies, fresh cream, milk and garlic. This salad’s inspiration, very obviously, came from the Vietnamese rice rolls. It’s a very light salad and I feel eating it alone without the dip is good enough. You wouldn’t believe how fresh it is!

Homemade Tofu Salad with Sesame Dressing ($4.50)

Mini red radish, red leafy lettuce, mizuna (potherb mustard) and home-made tofu, served with flavourful, healthy Japanese style light sesame dressing. For this particular salad, the tofu is handmade by the people at Ootoya. It does not taste like your regular tofu; you can actually felt its handmade taste and texture. It’s soft, smooth, very flavourful and most of all this is what I liked most, it has a coarse texture that makes eating their tofu so mouthful.

The Mains @ Ootoya

Grilled Mackerel Set

Grilled Pork Belly Set

The sets comes with a bowl of rice, Chawanmushi, miso soup and pickled vegetables. It comes in the presentation as below:

It was an eye opener for me in this media invite to know about such self-sufficiency techniques being introduced into Singapore especially its produce are being used in restaurants such as Ootoya in their menus. Just something trivia: we were taught Hydroponics as the only method of self-sufficiency in schools. The advantage of having soil-based indoor farming over hydroponics is that the crops will not die rapidly should the hydroponic system fails as there is soil used as a buffer. Over-watering and pathogen attacking the crops are less likely to happen too.

I tried it and I must really say it does indeed taste fresher and more crisp than other vegetables out there that are labelled as “Fresh” too. I personally like their lettuce very much (picking the green fresh, cool refreshing lettuce with your chopstick and stuff it all in your mouth and hear the crunch as you bite) but the rest of the vegetables tastes just as great. Besides being fresh, you can now enjoy truly fresh vegetables without the fear of ingesting harmful pesticides as well. The salad pricing are affordable too and their mains are what I called Japanese standard, you can actually feel pride in their dishes. Complete and filling. Honto ni oiishi desu ne!

Head on down to any Ootoya Japanese restaurant this mid-August to give their salads a try!

Chotto matte, mina-san! Before you head down, I got a special deal just for YummyFoodBook readers: