A new pop-restaurant in London - wastED - is gathering Europe's most acclaimed chefs to prepare delicacies fashioned from food waste. According to Bloomberg, some of the guest shows that will be serving up normally discarded ingredients without the customers knowing in advance will be Gordon Ramsey, Clare Smyth and Tom Kerridge.
Blue Hill restaurant owner Dan Barber will be in charge of the London's version of wastED, which was originally launched in Manhattan in 2015. Each day the menu will vary depending on what is available.
What's so original about this restaurant is its concept of recycling food. According to the project's website, all ingredients will be sourced from leftover food items from farmers, distributors, restaurants, retailers and others. There will be dishes for sharing and an unorthodox tea, as you cannot avoid serving it in the UK.
Dan Barber said the purpose of the project is to draw attention to food waste, a growing problem at a global level. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, about one third of all food produced annually goes to waste. About 1.3 billions tons ($990 billion worth) gets lost or to waste mostly in rich, developed countries.
While this amount of food is wasted, one in every nine people in the world is undernourished and a large majority of those people are in developing countries in Asia and Africa.
After rising to fame at the innovative New York's farm-to-table movement, Barber thinks a new approach to the use of food waste and an open mind about ingredients could have an impact on foodies in places like London.
It's all very exciting, Barber told Bloomberg in an interview. To put together a menu in a different city is to be forced to learn about tis history and its agricultural realities. And the food scene in London is very vibrant.
What I like about London is the openness to these ideas. The culture around food waste is fantastic - way ahead of America's.
The original wastED was a popup in New York two years ago. One of the guest chefs was multi-Michelin starred Alain Ducasse. While Barber is a hero in the culinary world, the food was a world away from fine dining, using as ingredients bits of meat, fruit, vegetables and fish that you'd normally chuck away.
According to Eater.com, the menu in New York offered kale ribs, bruised vegetables and fruits, fish heads and state bread.
Barber said he is working with both farmers and chefs to create the menu. He also confessed that he drew inspiration from the British bubble and squeak, made with leftovers such as cabbage and potato.
It's too passive, he says. It allows you to dictate the menu by purchasing what you want from a farm. You end up treating it like a supermarket. I don't reject the term farm to table - I own a restaurant on a farm, so I'd better be careful - but it's too easy.
I am in favor of expanding the definition of what is waste food. We get to choose what's for dinner when really we need a pattern of eating that supports a landscape.