TLDR: Vegan Italian isn't a compromise on the real thing. At Kasto, it's classical Italian technique applied to plant-based ingredients — handmade pasta, scratch sauces, and dishes built around flavour first. Here's how we approach it.
The first question people ask, sometimes before they've even sat down, is whether vegan Italian is actually any good. It's a fair question. Italian cooking is built around ingredients like aged cheese, cured meat, and egg pasta, and stripping those out sounds like it should leave something diminished.
It doesn't. At least, it shouldn't, if you're doing it properly.
The Italian approach to cooking, applied to plants
Italian cuisine at its best is about technique and produce, not about any one ingredient. A good soffritto, a properly reduced sauce, the right amount of resting time on a piece of pasta dough — these are the fundamentals. They're not dependent on animal products.
What we do at Kasto is apply the same rigour we'd bring to a classical Italian kitchen to a 100% plant-based menu. That means making our own pasta daily, building sauces from scratch, and sourcing produce from local Balinese farmers who grow things worth cooking with. The constraints of cooking without meat, dairy, or eggs force a certain kind of discipline — you can't rely on butter to finish a sauce or eggs to enrich pasta dough, so you learn other ways to achieve the same depth and texture.
That process has led to some of the dishes we're most proud of.
What we actually serve
The pasta changes, but the approach doesn't. Our Brasato Plin Ravioli is a good example of what we're talking about. Plin is a Piedmontese pasta shape — small, pinched at the ends — traditionally filled with braised meat. Our version uses plant-based "beef" slow-braised in red wine for several hours, until it has the same depth and pull as the original. The pasta is hand-pinched to order. The sauce is built from the braising liquid.
The Oh My Pork is our pulled pork panini — shredded plant-based pork with a slow-cooked texture, served in a toasted roll with our own sauces. It's become the thing people come back for.
On the pizza side, we use a traditional oven and make our dough in-house. The challenge with vegan pizza is usually the cheese, and we've spent a lot of time developing a plant-based mozzarella that melts and colours correctly in the oven. It took a while to get right.
Why Canggu is the right place for this
Canggu has a food culture that takes plant-based cooking seriously. The people who eat here aren't looking for a vegan version of something as a consolation prize. They want food that's genuinely good, full stop. That's the right audience for what we're doing.
The access to ingredients helps too. Bali's local produce is exceptional — tomatoes with real flavour, herbs grown in the volcanic soil, tempeh that's made fresh. We use local suppliers wherever we can, and the quality comes through in the cooking.
Canggu's Italian restaurant scene
Canggu has a handful of Italian restaurants, and they're mostly good. What Kasto offers that none of them do is a completely plant-based menu with a fine-dining approach behind it. You can eat pasta and pizza elsewhere in the neighbourhood — but not made this way, and not with this intention behind them.
If you're a vegan or vegetarian eating in Canggu, you no longer have to choose between eating Italian and eating according to your values.
Frequently asked questions
Is vegan Italian food authentic? It depends on what you mean by authentic. The techniques we use — hand-rolling pasta, slow-braising, building sauces from scratch — are entirely classical Italian. The ingredients are plant-based. We'd argue that's closer to the spirit of Italian cooking than a restaurant serving mediocre pasta with good cheese.
What makes Kasto different from other Italian restaurants in Canggu? Kasto is the only 100% vegan Italian restaurant in Canggu. Every dish is plant-based. The kitchen is led by a chef with Michelin-star restaurant experience who applies fine-dining technique to the menu.
Is the pasta at Kasto actually handmade? Yes. We make all pasta daily from scratch. It's not made with eggs — we've developed a dough that achieves the right texture and bite without them.
Is Kasto good for non-vegans? Consistently, yes. A large portion of our customers aren't vegan. They come for the food, find it's genuinely excellent, and often don't think about the plant-based aspect until they leave.
Do you serve vegetarian food? Kasto is 100% vegan, so the entire menu is automatically vegetarian-friendly. There's nothing on it containing meat, fish, dairy, or eggs.
Kasto is at Jl. Canggu Padang Linjong, Canggu. Open Tuesday to Sunday. Reserve a table.