LivinGreens is quite a nice place. The only thing unpleasant about the place is when people bring their "misconceptions" and "vegetarian food is for Buddhists/not real food/is probably full of MSG" ideas here and then dismiss the food without giving it full credit.

Having been to Original Sin at Holland Village and Genesis at Circular Road, I'm convinced that organic vegetarian is the way to go. The effect of putting in "clean fuel" into the body instead of food with "trans-fats", "carcinogenically potent substances", or saturated fat, is just amazing.

It's not true that you will lose weight when you go vegan, but you will definitely be more alert and less sluggish. Don't believe? It's proven even in the Bible in the Book of Daniel (Google: Bible + Daniel + Vegetables), where Daniel and his friends proposed to their captors that they were given only vegetables and water. Guess what? They looked better and healthier than their cohorts who ate meat and drank wine.

Okay, so you want to know how "real" the food is? Be prepared to dump all your misconceptions and embrace the concept of All Natural Taste (ie no chemicals or MSG) of Earthy Goodness (food grown from the earth)

1) Bak Kut Teh Vemicelli ($6.80)
Any foodie will point out that BKT is a meat dish and that this dish is going to taste flat without the pork ribs. True but not true...why?

True: As you know, if anything tastes powerfully good, it's got fat in it. That's how the BKT tastes so good. Recall seeing white pieces of stuff floating on the surface of any good BKT soup? Yup! That's the fat from the pork rib.

Not True: True foodies will tell you that true BKT is also made up of herbs (which gives it is brown color. Not the soya sauce that unscrupulous hawkers use - regardless of what dialect they are from. That's a rip off!). The BKT you drink has two components. The meat/ribs and the herbs that are selected to bring out the flavour of the meat.

At LivinGreens, they focus on the key flavour of BKT and replicate the vegan BKT with that key flavour to give the broth an unmistakable BKT taste. There are other ingredients that go into making the broth and my guess is that they use a certain type of mushroom to compensate for the lack of "meat" taste.

Taste wise, the bak kut teh was strong and heady. But it didn't really go well with the bee hoon as bee hoon tends to leave a distinct "bee hooney" taste that jostles for attention alongside the BKT broth.

2) Ma Jiang Mian (Sesame Seed Oil Buckwheat Noodle) - ($6.80)
Sesame seed oil is quite tasty on its own and it definitely flavoured the buckwheat noodle to the extent that you'd forget that you were not eating meat.

3) Tauhu Goreng (Deepfried Beancurd with Nut sauce) ($3.50)
This is definitely my favourite. The sauce that accompanied the beancurd was refreshingly tasty without the heaviness of the usual peanut sauce and most importantly, I could taste the natural sweetness of the sauce ingredients.

Tauhu Goreng sauce usually consists of 'tablespoons full' of sugar to enhance the flavour of the sauce. But at LivinGreens, refined white sugar, diary and eggs are banned substances and it was quite impressive how the sauce managed to tickle my tastebuds without all these "taste enhancing" ingredients

4) Avocado Salad ($7)
I don't like avocado typically and normally wouldn't order it. But I thought, let's see if they can make something I don't like, taste good....So the challenge was on

A bowl of salad was put on my table. It was very pretty with multiple colors and textures (from the various vegetables used). To the chef's credit, her avocado mash played on the vegetable's strength where its creamy texture was blended to stick to the other vegetables, lending those vegetables its "avocado-ey" taste. I saw many vegetables in the bowl that I typically disliked for its "grassy" taste, like alfafa, but I was happy. My tastebuds were happy and well-treated to good old natural vegetable tastes.

5) Carrot cake with Chocolate (Carob) Cream Topping ($5.50)
What's a meal without a dessert (or two for my case)? When I peered at their dessert counter, I saw only one slice of carrot cake left and thought to myself "it must be this good to have only one slice left". So I asked the restaurant manager to reserve the last piece for me. What surprised me was when he asked "Both pieces? Or just one?" MY GOODNESS! I was stunned as 1 slice was really tiny. But I thought, "never mind, just try"

To taste the cake, I used the fork and cut right through the tip to examine its texture. Was it dry? Was it moist? Did the baker had enough skill to keep the cake "together"? Here's the verdict of my fork test:

It did not crumble and pushing the fork through the cake (from top to bottom), I could feel the moisture of the carrot cake component. The only bad thing was that the carrot cake portion couldn't not really stick to the "chocolate" and tended to "fall off" the cake when the fork teeth cut till the "chocolate" cream layer in the centre.

Taste wise, the taste of the "chocolate substituting" carob was uncannily "milk chocolate like" and I thoroughly enjoyed its cool "chocolatey" creamy taste on my tongue.

6) Mango Cake ($5.50)
Since the carrot cake was such a pleasant experience and coupled by the fact that their interpretation of "slice" was so small, that I felt the need to try their "more available" mango cake.

The mango cake, like all the cakes at LivinGreen, do not use flour, diary, eggs or refined sugar. Layered between 2 layers of what I thought looked like "cake" ( I really don't know how they do it without flour) was slices of mango. Doing the fork test on it, I was disappointed to find that the slices of mango were so slippery that the top layer of "cake" would slide off the bottom half of "cake". I like my cake layers to 'stay together' and this was not a cake that I would like immediately. So I moved onto the taste test.

On first taste, I found the taste very different from the fine mango-cakes I've been brought up on all my life (yes, Orchard Hotel, that's you!). Due to my initial taste buds shock, my first thoughts was "yucks!". Then when the effect of shock subsided, I found that the "mango cake" had it's own "plain jane but still pleasantly sweet" character.

Do I like the mango cake? Not really, which would probably explain why there was 80% of a whole cake still on display as opposed to the Carrot Cake which had one thin slice left.

Verdict:
I liked the atmosphere at LivinGreens. It was a nice and brightly lited cafe and the restaurant manager and chef were very pleasant.

In terms of price and value, I'd say its pretty fair if you think 'organic'. But if you just want a cheap meal to fill your stomach, then it'll be "not worth it"

What works to their disadvantage is that the cost price of organic produce is substantially higher than regular produce, therefore, portions tend to be smaller and prices are at least $2 more than what you would prefer to pay.

As for me, I'm not going to give up my regular food and would likely consider coming to this place when I want healthy grub. Apart from that, I have very little reason why I should come here as parents and generally not so health conscious friends are unlikely to want to pay those prices to eat so little.

5 Things to Consider Before Coming Here

1) Your Health. Is it important to you? One of the reasons why the chef started this cafe was because it helped cancer patients recover. Yes, you are not sick, but the mainstream food we are eating has chemicals and eventually, our body will not be able to withstand the daily thumpings of the chemicals and succumb to disease and illness

2) Your perception of organic and vegetarian food. Unless you are open-minded enough to not compare OV food with mainstream food/poison, you'd be better off just saving your money and going to Black Angus for a piece of steak

3) Your budget. One main is probably not going to be sufficient. You'd probably do well to order 2 appetisers, 2 salads, 2 mains, 2 desserts and 2 drinks if you were dining with another adult. This would easily come up to $30 per person.

4) Your expectations. Remember that our tastebuds are used to flavour enhancers like fat and MSG. So when you taste their food, remember that it's all 100% natural goodness and sweetness. When you adjust your expectations, it's unlikely you'd be disappointed here

5) Transportation, unless you drive (you can park at the Concourse and walk across), this place is accessible by buses 961, 100, 107 and 980 only.