The Vegan Venturer: To Succeed Against The Odds In A Meat Eaters’ World

Veganism is going viral across the globe as more and more people are choosing to change to a lifestyle of plant and fruit-based eating. The Philippines, however, is proving a difficult bastion to conquer. One young and gutsy restaurateur and entrepreneur based in Davao City, Sahara Lara Casteel, is on a mission to educate lechon (roasted pork) loving Davaoe?os about alternative eating habits that are good for them, their environment and the planet as a whole.

Family fish farm

Sahara spent her childhood in an environment pretty far removed from the vegan lifestyle she would later adopt. She grew up on her family’s milk fish farm in Palili in Davao del Sur that her grandfather built. He passed it on to his seven sons and daughters and now most of Sahara’s cousin and uncles run the farm. “The farm production is now bigger than ever because milk fish has become a popular bait to catch wild tuna with,” explains Sahara. “The milk fish are fed a lot of feeds, which I believe ruins the environment, to make them grow big fast. Considering my current views on food and health, it feels a little strange that I once played there with my cousins making little fish farms. But I also think that working on a farm spurred my interest in the environment and laid the foundation for my choices later in life.”

Those choices would in no small measure be informed by the new environment she became exposed to when at age nine Sahara with her two sisters, but without their parents, moved to Davao City. Just before, Sahara’s father—from whom she had become estranged—had been tragically shot in Manila by a drug dealer who mistook him for a policeman. Sahara’s mom was in South Korea running a rolling convenience store out of a big van. In Davao, the girls stayed with their aunt, Tarhata, their father’s eldest sister. Being away from the farm, in a big city, without traditional parental oversight, Sahara had ample opportunity to pursue new interests and develop her own ideals and principles outside of the mainstream.

“Classmates would question my choices. “Why are you just eating the eggs? You are not even religious!””

One of the new influences she was exposed to in Davao City was environmentalism. “When I was sixteen, I attended a meeting of Greenpeace and learned about what we can do to preserve the planet, stop pollution and live meat free. In high school I started to get more serious about activism. That’s also when I became a vegetarian. As a university student at Ateneo de Davao University, I found that no one really understood what I was doing. Classmates would question my choices. “Why are you just eating the eggs? You are not even religious!,” some of them would say. Waning myself from fish was the hardest, because I grew up eating lots of it. A few years later, when I was in Australia, I stopped eating fish altogether, although for the first month I stuck with salmon to please my mom. She would insist on it, especially when she cooked it herself. Soon, though, I gave that up too.”

Thinking of “Down Under”

Sahara’s mom was absent from her daughter’s life for fourteen years, including the nine years that Sahara spent in Davao City. They did stay in touch over the phone and when Sahara learned that her mom had moved from South Korea to Sydney, Australia for work, she started contemplating moving there herself. With most of her cousins working on the farm and her friends dead set on staying in Davao, Sahara was ready to get away from the Philippines and experience student life abroad. So she went for it. “It was weird seeing my mom again after having been apart for so long. I even moved in with her, if only temporarily. We lived in an apartment in Vaucluse, a suburb of Sydney, a forty five minute bus ride from the city.”

After a month, Sahara found her own place and started studying at the Australian Institute of Higher Education. Over the course of eight years she obtained two degrees, one in business management, one in marketing and a partial degree in accountancy. “I had realized that to put my ideas about sustainability, zero-waste and eating whole foods into practice, solid business acumen would be essential. Sydney was bustling with entrepreneurs doing just that. It was a good environment for me to be exposed to.”

Enjoying her newfound Aussie independence, Sahara started noticing the alternative foods that omnivores, vegetarians and vegans alike seemed to be enjoying. “Fellow students were eating fish substitutes and chicken nuggets from a place called ‘Lord of the Fries’. It was amazing and completely unheard of in Davao.”

“The Vegan Dinosaur” moved to this location in Malfori Heights two years ago. Sahara has plans to redo the kitchen space and add a small bulk store with unpackaged produce in the restaurant. She’s also thinking about opening up a vegan burger place in Matina Town Square, a popular open air city hub in Davao City with bars, restaurants and live entertainment.

Going “tofurkey” in Sydney

Inspired and emboldened by what she saw happening around her, Sahara went pretty much straight from vegetarian to vegan shortly after arriving in Sydney. “You could say I went “cold tofurkey”, but it wasn’t so difficult to do that there,” she admits. “Australia is the third largest market for vegan products. Unlike in the Philippines, there’s a big community and many support networks.” Support did not come from her family who found it, and still finds it, difficult to understand her position. Sahara: “Like most Filipinos, my relatives all love meat and they would say things to me like: “Just have one piece of liempo (grilled pork belly)!” As I got skinnier they thought it was just a diet thing. They don’t understand the advocacy behind what I do.”

My relatives all love meat and they would say things to me like: “Just have one piece of liempo!””

One of the ways Sahara expressed her advocacy was as an active member of Greenpeace in Sydney. She joined a protest again agrochemical giant Monsanto and advocated for the release from a Russian prison of the Artic 30, the crew of the Greenpeace ship Artic Sunrise, who were fighting against Shell’s oil drilling operations in the polar region. She was also an active donor and supporter of Sea Shepherd International and was able to tour around their legendary Steve Irwin ship. When she finished her studies she took on a job at IKU Wholefood. “IKU is a Japanese word meaning “go”,” explains Sahara. “Everything at IKU is takeaway and it’s all macrobiotic, unprocessed food. They follow the logic that a balanced diet helps you have a balanced life. I learned a lot there and I applied those lessons in my own restaurant that I would open in Davao a couple years later.”

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