With food waste remaining a hot topic for 2017, a new sustainable pop-up restaurant, showcasing some of the best British chefs, is set to launch in February.
wastED London is the UK incarnation of New York-based chef Dan Barber’s waste-not concept. Running for a month on Selfridge’s rooftop from the 24th of that month, the menu uses ingredients that normally get binned, such as cabbage cores, as well as pork from waste-fed pigs.
While Barber, a three Michelin-starred chef, will be leading the kitchen, a rota of guest chefs will create a special on each evening. As well as Gordon Ramsay and Jason Atherton, Pierre Koffmann, Clare Smyth, Isaac McHale and Brett Graham are all confirmed to take a turn. Diners will be told who the guest chef on the day of their reservation is 24 hours before their booking.
The menu has been designed together with producers and food shops like Neal’s Yard Dairy, Tesco, Selfridge’s Food Hall and Beavertown Brewery, as well as British and European farmers, fishermen and butchers, to transform their leftovers into dishes.
“We didn’t want to just transplant wastED; we wanted to completely reimagine it,” Barber says of the move. “Coming to London has meant discovering new partners, but also tapping into a fully evolved movement — a conversation around food waste spearheaded by chefs, advocates and industry leaders, and supported by vital culinary traditions.”
All lunch and dinner dishes are small plates to share, with each priced at a flat rate of £15. There will also be an afternoon tea service, with prices starting at £32.
The idea first happened state-side when Barber, who is internationally renowned for his farm/ restaurant Blue Hill, turned the fine dining establishment into a pop up focusing in on the forgotten parts of ingredients for three weeks in March 2015. While the ethos is the same, this will be a fresh new version that works with British and European produce.
If anyone’s going to get the British public eating their carrot tops and cauliflower remnants, surely it’s Ramsay et al. And this is definitely a better alternative to the whole eating insects thing. We’re in.