I ate at the world’s first zero-waste restaurant in Hackney – and it doesn’t even have a BIN

With 9.5 million tonnes of food being dumped every year in Britain alone, Britons are increasingly looking for ways to ‘save the leftovers’ and prevent a climate crisis.

Now a trendy east London restaurant wants to change the way the food industry deals with its share of edible waste.

Silo in Hackney claims to be the world’s first zero-waste eatery, and there isn’t even a waste bin in the kitchen.

The restaurant has already made a name for itself by showcasing dishes using ‘invasive’ non-native species such as gray squirrel and Japanese knotweed.

I decided to go along and try the £75 tasting menu, which included home-made bread, wild rabbit dumplings and an interpretation of a famous Walkers snack.

Silo is the creation of British chef Douglas McMaster, who previously worked at Heston Blumenthal’s famous Fat Duck.

McMaster says: ‘We are the world’s first zero waste restaurant and we strive to innovate the food industry while showing respect: respect for the environment, respect for the way food is produced and respect for the nutrition we put into our bodies. to give.’

Silo doesn’t even claim to have a waste bin – and from sitting at the bar at the edge of the restaurant’s open kitchen, I was able to confirm that this is indeed the case.

However, I did see one of the chefs peel potatoes and put the leftovers in a plastic container.

I asked the waitress, “If there’s no trash bin, what’s going to happen to those leftovers?”

She explained that all the vegetable peels from the kitchen are combined and cooked in a pressure cooker to create a ‘vegetable syrup’ for savory dishes.

After the syrup is made, the remaining sludge is fed to an ‘aerobic digester’ where it is consumed by microorganisms.

When food scraps rot, they usually release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that causes global warming.

Other leftovers from food preparation are used in other clever ways – for example, the leftovers from the freshly baked bread are used to make the ice cream sandwich, as well as the dough for Asian-style savory dumplings.

Essentially, Silo transforms leftovers from food preparation into brand new dishes – although it doesn’t stop at storing the leftovers that guests don’t eat.

Apart from the food, the zero waste ethos is enforced in other ways, such as through the furniture and dishes which are apparently made from recycled materials.

Meanwhile, all products delivered to the site are transported in reusable totes and containers.

The waiter told me, “We explain to our suppliers that we cannot work with them if everything is wrapped in plastic.”

And to save paper, a huge copy of the menu is projected onto the wall instead of being printed on individual sheets.

My 10-dish tasting menu started with the house-made ‘Siloaf’ bread and butter and purple sprouting broccoli with dairy garum (a Roman-inspired sauce made from whey and cheese rind).

Next came Silo’s interpretation of one of Britain’s best-loved crisps – Walkers Quavers – made from leftover buttermilk and whey.

The huge triangular crunch is drizzled with the bright orange vegetable syrup, followed by finely grated goat cheese.

Another highlight was the raw pollock, lightly marinated and topped with cubes of wild horseradish, dressed in crab sauce.

Typically for tasting menus all portions were small, although I suppose this also fits in with the zero waste philosophy.

In the rare event that uneaten food makes it back to the kitchen, it is added to the aerobic digester, the chef told me.

Perhaps the tastiest dish of the evening was the maitake mushroom – a little-known and underutilized species with distinctive wavy caps – served with miso sauce.

There was also beautiful Cornish Cull Yaw mutton, rich, tender and gamey, served with a sweet cream sauce.

Silo is clearly breaking some environmental rules here by putting beef on its menu, which has the highest greenhouse gas emissions of all foods.

The tasting menu ended with two puddings: first, a dairy-free ice cream made from fermented rice and sake, the Japanese rice wine.

It packed a powerful burst of refreshing citrus flavor that was reminiscent of some of my favorite childhood lollipops on a hot summer day.

But the most ingenious offering of the evening was the ice cream sandwich, which requires unused slices of bread to make the two waffles.

For more bread, soak it in water for two days until it starts to ferment and turns into homemade liquid Marmite.

This is churned with leftover buttermilk (from Silo’s homemade butter) to make the delicious salty-sweet ice cream, which tasted like dulce de leche, the delicious South American sauce.

While some dishes were more flavorful than others, there are an abundance of very clever ideas on display at Silo.

I’m a big fan of the zero waste concept and see no reason why other restaurants shouldn’t be inspired when brainstorming new dishes.

Restaurants are just as guilty as households – if not more so – when it comes to throwing fancy ingredients in the trash like they’re worthless.

Certainly, with more than eight billion mouths to feed and constant warnings of an impending food crisis, we should show food more respect than that.

From now on, I’ll pay more attention to the leftovers in my fridge when I’m thinking about what to make for dinner.