Menus that take advantage of overlooked ingredients
In 2017, Skye Gyngell's Spring restaurant in London launched a relatively inexpensive early evening menu that championed discarded and waste produce including misshapen vegetables and bread from the previous day. Doing the right thing by suppliers and the planet while driving the business through quieter times was a smart and progressive move (after seven years or so, the list remains).
The idea has now been picked up by a number of other restaurants including sustainable powerhouse Silo – which runs special dinners focusing on invasive species including Japanese knotweed and gray squirrel – and, somewhat unexpectedly, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. The latter, which holds two Michelin stars and serves dishes that have their roots in British recipes from yesteryear, launched a £59 lunch menu as a counterpoint to the much more expensive tasting menu and a la carte menu of last year.
Featuring dishes including smoked salmon belly with dill, yogurt and sourdough; Ragu from pig's ears. Battaglia pie with beef, heart and celery bread. and lamington cake with white chocolate mousse, coconut and rhubarb, the menu is designed to show that sustainability is not a contemporary innovation.
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Sustainability pioneer Lanchester Wines has become the first UK wine company to offer a 300g ultra-light bottle of wine to its bulk wine customers. Shipping wine in bulk saves about 38% more carbon dioxide than shipping by the bottle. The new 300g wine bottle removes 3.2 tonnes of bottle weight per 24,000 liters of wine (300g bottle versus the standard 400g bottle in the UK) from the finished goods, reducing the carbon footprint of the venue's wine list. In partnership with renowned glass manufacturer Verallia, we have pioneered the use of this innovative bottle that sets a new standard for sustainability in the wine industry. The Verallia Bordelaise Air 300g bottle provides a 25% CO2 reduction compared to the British standard 400g bottle. Made from approximately 30% recycled glass and designed specifically for the wine sector, the Bordelaise Air 300g combines environmental friendliness with the timeless elegance of a classic Bordeaux wine bottle. Glass is 100% recyclable, and the UK glass sector recycles around 74.2%, one of the highest rates of any packaging material (according to britglass.org.uk). Because being carbon neutral is just the beginning.
www.lanchesterwines.co.uk
Regenerative agriculture
The term regenerative agriculture was coined in the 1980s, but people had been putting soil first long before that. Key practices associated with the movement include topsoil regeneration, the drive to increase biodiversity and enhance the overall health and vitality of the farm's soil. While the term regenerative farming is largely associated with small-scale farming – a number of farm-to-table restaurants are champions of regenerative farming including Wilsons in Bristol, Crokadon in Cornwall and The Small Holding ' in Kent, and Simon Rogan's 'Our Farm in the Lakes' – the practice is now being adopted by large-scale farms.
Mass production opens up access to regeneratively grown ingredients for larger companies. Earlier this year, the 66-strong casual restaurant chain ASK Italian became the first major Italian restaurant group to make pizza using renewable flour. The group says its partnership with Wildfarmed will see a 50% reduction in carbon impact compared to previous dough. “The work Wildfarmed does to improve agriculture and biodiversity is of great importance when considering making a positive impact on the way we grow our food,” says Corinne Prior, Italian Marketing Manager at ASK. “Dough is among the top five ingredients that directly contribute to ASK’s food emissions, so our partnership with Wildfarmed is an important step toward our net-zero goal.”
Urban gardening
Although growing some ingredients on-site is nothing new, chefs are now raising the bar on innovation with more sophisticated setups that deliver a greater proportion of the food to their menus. Technology – including aeroponics, hydroponics, and vertical farming systems – has helped significantly, allowing kitchens to grow a wide range of ingredients quickly and efficiently.
The recently launched Roe restaurant in Canary Wharf offers a huge advantage with a cutting-edge air wall that grows lots of different types of produce including peas, a variety of peppers, strawberries and herbs (verbena, lemon verbena and sorrel) that will be used across the menu. The wall represents a major investment for the company as it looks to boost its sustainable credentials.
This isn't the first time the trio behind Raw – chefs Will Murray, Jack Croft and restaurateur James Robson – have looked to innovate in this regard – their first restaurant, Fallow, grows its own mushrooms in a small room built above a fridge in a tiny house. Basement kitchen.
Also in London, Spitalfields Gastropub the Culpeper features a rooftop kitchen garden where guests can dine among all kinds of produce including herbs and vegetables. This year, owners Nico Treasure and Gareth Roberts have upped the ante with a 3,500 sq ft plot of land at Deptford Little Farm in south-east London, which now supplies Culpepper Restaurant and its three other London pubs.
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What if business challenges became dinner solutions? Policies such as workplace recycling in Wales and simple recycling in England are driving change in how waste is collected and managed. Separating food waste in UK businesses is a welcome move, but the best outcome is to avoid waste before it happens. Redistributing excess stock is an effective way to prevent products that are still fit for human use and consumption from going to waste. As part of Biffa, Company Shop Group works with manufacturers and retailers to identify surplus that can be redistributed, before it becomes waste, ensuring it reaches people first. “By redistributing, we can support the industry with more ways to divert surplus and prevent waste, through the use of innovative capabilities such as our bottle washing facility, which prevented 3.2 million bottles from going to waste in 2023.” Owen McLellan, Group Managing Director at Company Shop Group.
www.biffa.co.uk
Zero waste
Increasingly, the zero-waste approach isn't limited to restaurants that put their sustainable practices front and center. Top restaurants, including two-Michelin-starred Sat Bains in Nottingham, are now getting into action with a number of projects including closed-loop composting to turn food waste into compost for an urban kitchen garden (see above).
At Bristol's Wilson's – listed as one of the 100 best places to eat in the UK – very little goes in the bin. For example, the stems of vegetables, including broccoli and cauliflower, are made flavorful by turning them into kimchi, which in turn is used to add acidity to sauces.
In London, Chantelle Nicholson created an upscale Mayfair restaurant that makes clever use of things that often end up in the trash. Sustainable, peak-season produce from small farmers is used as the chefs take a low-waste approach to cooking. This low-waste ethos extends to the restaurant's design, which has resulted in 40% lower emissions than standard restaurant fit-out thanks to the use of recycled materials. Furthermore, everything is designed so that it can be dismantled, reused, donated or recycled at the end of its life.
Silo, one of the leaders in the zero-waste restaurant space, is now doubling down on its efforts by launching a brewing plant that will produce commercial quantities of koji and miso beer grains. The Silo team wants to share the fruits of their labor by making their fresh koji available between businesses, “and make it easier for restaurants, bakeries, breweries, bars and other home cooks on their waste-reducing journeys,” says founder Douglas McMaster. Headed by Ryan Walker, “fermentation expert” and Silo’s R&D front-runner, the project aims to take what was previously an in-house project to scale, “transforming difficult ingredients into exceptional, high-value products” that can be used in flagship kitchens and bars.
Plant reassessment
Everyone knows that focusing more on fruits and vegetables is good news for the planet. But going meat, fish, and dairy-free can be a tall order for the most ambitious restaurateurs because — frankly — labels like plant-based and, worst of all, vegan put off a lot of diners (especially when they're considering dropping relatively large sums). . ).
Siblings Kirk and Kelly Haworth (pictured at top of article) are looking to change that with their first solo restaurant venture. Plates is opening in Shoreditch next month, and is not being marketed as a vegan restaurant. “There will be no meat, fish or dairy in the kitchen, but I don't like putting labels on my food and I don't like the political connotations of the word vegan,” Kirk explains. “I'm trying to create a restaurant that's as exciting, creative and delicious as any other. My job is to make a carrot dish that's as exciting as a scallop dish. We want to serve at such a high level that people don't even think about the word 'vegan.'”
The price point for the couple's new restaurant has not yet been confirmed, but it will be upscale with Kirk's CV including The Square and Restaurant Sat Bains. With a mission to change perceptions of how fruits, vegetables and plants are transformed, Plates is definitely a restaurant to keep a close eye on.
Chefs who generally focus on meat and fish also take plant-based foods seriously as a category. Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons, for example, is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a vegetarian menu that sees some of chef Raymond Blanc's most famous dishes reworked. As you'd hope at £245 for seven courses, there are plenty of dishes, including stuffed platters, white asparagus and Gewurztraminer; Garden beetroot terrine and horseradish sorbet; The red fruits are steeped in red wine, fresh mint, basil and pink champagne.
The Bull Inn has won the Estrella Damm Award for Sustainability
Located in Devon's South Hams, The Bull Inn is an organic and ethical pub and hotel that makes the most of being surrounded by some of the UK's best organic food producers. After a year of eco-renovations, it launched in late 2019 as a truly supplier-led organic restaurant.
The company is managed by a “No Bull Rules” ethos covering dining, trading and the workforce. The rules in the former include serving plant-based, seasonal and local foods and sourced meats, while the self-imposed rules for trading include choosing green energy suppliers, purchasing recycled and recyclable materials, fair trade, organic, sustainable or eco-friendly wherever possible. Reduce and challenge the use of packaging. At the same time, its employees benefit from a supportive work culture and are paid salaries well above the real living wage.
The Sustainability Award is judged by the Sustainable Restaurant Association, which was particularly impressed with The Bull's practices, such as avoiding pre-packaged snacks, plastic wrap and bottled water; use environmental cleaning products and aprons made locally from recycled materials and vegetable dyes; And its cooperation with organizations, charities, and local companies to enhance its impact.
It was also honored for implementing a heat recovery system in the kitchen, using solar panels to heat hot water, and monitoring energy use in real time. The Bull purchases 100% renewable energy and processes food waste locally at Langage Farm's anaerobic digestion facility to produce electricity, heat and fertiliser, resulting in the country's only carbon neutral dairy.
The Bull's dedication to working sustainably with its food and suppliers was also praised. The kitchen buys whole animals and butchers them to reduce waste. Its own organic farm, Badaford, is dedicated to regenerative agriculture and wildlife restoration, with tanks that conserve water and provide habitat, spinneys offering livestock fodder and shade, and fruit orchards that support biodiversity.
www.nationalrestaurantawards.co.uk
