“Loving Hut is no ordinary international cafe. The moment you walk in, you feel the difference.” Unfortunately the difference you feel when you walk into the new branch of Loving Hut in Daegu’s Siji district, is a strange sterile glow off the white walls and an eerie sense that something isn’t right. “- love pouring from every corner, every painting and every dish – creating a flowing ambiance and yet calmness that touches you deep in the heart” reads the brochure on the table. But the “Supreme Master Televison” on the wide-screen TVs repeating the moto “Be veg. Go Green. Save the Planet” over low-resolution stock shots swooping across a manufactured landscapes bring to mind a dystopia science fiction scenario, not inner peace. Supreme Master Ching Hai, the founder of Loving Hut, and self-proclaimed leader of the “Quan Yin Method”, stares straight at you from the screen and with her spastic eye fluttering erratically she proclaims: “Be Veg. Go Green. Save the Planet and the stars and moon will applaud you.”

The constant rhetoric “flowing from every corner” of the dining room must be a shock to the unsuspecting walk-in customers looking for a vegeburger, but looking around it doesn’t seem likely that they will get much of that. On the day after the grand opening, balloon archway still swaying in the breeze, the place is totally empty. The Daegu location is one of nine in Korea. There are Loving Hut branches all over the world and they are all run by the followers of Ching Hai. The sect claims to have over two million members world wide in fifty different countries.

It doesn’t take much digging to find evidence that Ching Hai’s motives are suspicious. In 1997 she tried to give Bill Clinton’s legal defense fund $600,000 in a manila envelope, but after investigating her background the money was returned. It was later learned that the money had come from her followers, many of whom were coerced into making contributions that were well beyond their means. Then in 2004 rangers in Biscayne Bay National Park in South Florida were tipped off about environmental violations in a federally protected mangrove forest adjacent to property owned by one “Celestia De Lamour”,  Ching Hai’s alias in Florida. It was discovered that a man-made island had been built encroaching on the “longest coastal mangrove growth still surviving in South Florida.” When lawsuits were filled for the cost of the restoration “Celestia De Lamour” was no were to be found.

“In October 1995 on Ching Hai Day, she wore queenly robes “under orders from God,” riding a sedan chair carried by eight bearers to the cheers of ‘your royal majesty”", says her page on wikipedia under the heading “Criticisms.” Information on her questionable practices being so readily available underscores the fact that her saccharine pathos and shameless attempt at cashing in on fears of environmental catastrophes are aimed mostly at under-educated people without the resources to sees her as the hypocrite and fraud that she appears to be.

So what’s the food like at “Loving Hut”? Its a great example of what Michael Pollan would describe as “edible food-like substances.” The menu, specifically designed for local tastes, is a prime example of  biggest mistake you can make serving vegetarian food and also, not surprisingly, the least healthy for eater or planet. Rather than focus on local, seasonal organically grown dishes the Loving Hut opts to recreate meat and dairy dishes with soy-substitutes. There is no celebration of the wonderful range of flavours and textures to be found in the vegetable world. No attempt to source locally. Instead its sickly-sweet soy burgers and clammy glutinous “kong-kas” a pork cutlet replica made of soy.

While the telescreens in the dinning room and kitchen simultaneously extol the virtues of a vegetarian diet’s impact on the health of the planet you can order an knock-off, Hite-like beverage referred to as “Hiking Beverage” that is in fact near-beer (a beer-like substance without any alcohol) that has been imported all the way from Thailand. Even the salad is made with lemons imported all the way from Florida.

If you are looking to decrease your carbon footprint you are probably better off eating down the street at the makoli restaurant that serves jeon (pancakes) made with locally grown green onions and rice flour. It’s just as “vegan” as Loving Hut but grown and made locally and don’t need to be raped of their key ingredients to taste good. The ethos of Loving Huts insistance on a vegetarian diet seems to be one of a distain for real food.  Rather than praise the wonders of vegetables they prefer to scape-goat animal products as the biggest barrier to environmental health. “If I could have me way,” she says on the telescreen as I bite into my cold, sugary soy burger, “I would ban everyone from eating meat.”

The scariest thing of all is that her message of environmental awareness and shift to an organic vegetable based diet is not at all wrong. It is the growing consensus of the world that she is right. We should “Be Veg. Go Green. Save the Planet.” but Ching Hai’s way is, in every conceivable way, the wrong way to do it.

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