NYC’s first Make Food, Not Waste restaurant week aims to produce zero waste

Zero waste doesn’t mean zero taste, if you ask these top chefs.

A dozen of New York City’s most popular restaurants and bars have accepted the challenge to produce no food waste for an entire week as part of the first “Make Food, No Waste” Restaurant Week. In conjunction with the mandatory citywide composting program that begins next week, kitchens across the Big Apple are getting creative to reduce, reuse and recycle their ingredients in the tastiest way possible, from September 30 to 6 October.

Participating countries include The Michelin-approved Musket Room, Loring Pace, Rezdôra and Win Son and newer hotspots like Bar Contra and Corima, among others.

“Food waste is almost inevitable in restaurants, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do better,” James Beard Award-winning chef Dan Kluger, owner of Loring Place and executive chef at Greywind, told The Post . “It felt like a great opportunity to push myself and explore new ways to reduce waste.”

Taka Sakaeda, chef and partner at Nami Nori, told The Post that Make Food, Not Waste helped spark “new ideas.”

“While we’ve been composting for some time … we pushed our creativity further.”

Food is the single largest item in landfills and produces methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide and a significant driver of climate change. It’s a matter very dear to many chefs’ hearts – and stomachs.

“For us, as a restaurant centered around fresh ocean cuisine, the state of our oceans hits particularly close to home,” Sakaeda added. “Imagine a future where overfishing and pollution have destroyed marine life – we couldn’t serve sushi without fish! It’s a grim reality that we want to prevent.”

To highlight their commitment, each restaurant will serve a new dish or cocktail that embodies their innovative approach to zero-waste cooking.

Restaurants participating in Make Food, Not Waste and their exclusive items:

• Bar Blondeau: Smoked salmon toast
• Bar Contra: Stumble bee cocktail with Meyer lemon juice, gin and honey
• Corima: Kampachi crudo and Kampachi “empanada”
• Greywind: panzanella salad (in the bakery) and caramelized French toast with stone fruit sorbet
• June: Corn Husk Polenta with Charred Corn, Sonoran Corn Mash and Corn Gravy, with Grilled Yellow Peaches Tossed on Chips and Jimmy Nardellos
• Le Crocodile: Waldorf Salad and Apple Tart
• Loring Country: Corn Husk Wrapped Halibut with Polenta Tomato Marmalade and Herbs
• Musket Room: Fried plantain panna cotta with curry ice cream, plantain caramel shell, peanut praline snow and a rye peanut crunch and butter sassafras soda with maple sorbet
• Nami Nori: Lobster dip with yuzu gelée, celery and rice chips
• Rezdôra: Mozzarella di bufala con pomodorini with mixed cherry tomatoes and basil
• Rhodora: Delicious fruit salad with supreme citrus, jicama, aguachile, chili, herbs and herb oil
• Win Son: Marinated cucumbers, with garlic and cilantro

“Each plate shows how we use things that would normally go to waste,” explained Kluger.

Bar Contra’s Fabian von Hauske told The Post that working with his team, including chef Jeremiah Stone, to produce zero waste has made their brainstorming sessions “more fun.”

“It makes you creative,” he said. “Now that we’re starting to think like that, everyone is constantly looking at what would be a waste and then trying to do something else with it.”

Make Food, Not Waste Restaurant Week’s new additions use trimmings, peels and scraps from other dishes to inspire new offerings.

A tasty example: The team at Corima is using all Kampachi fish. The tenderloin is featured in the Kampachi Crudo, the bones are seared on the grill used to create the corn-husk ram on the tasting menu, and the heads and collars are boiled and used in the Kampachi Empanada.

“Corn husk charred ram is a great example as corn husks are usually the first thing in the bin in many kitchens. However, they actually pack so much flavor, especially when grilled,” Fidel Caballero, chef and owner of Corima, told The Post about his dishes. He is even using extra to start the fire.

At Nami Nori, Lobster Dip is made by cracking open each part of the lobster to extract all the meat. The heads are saved to add more flavor to the lobster butter, and the uncooked sushi rice is boiled into a paste and dehydrated to make chips.

Along with being geniusly delicious with their ingredients, all restaurants participating in Make Food, Not Waste Restaurant Week will be using the Mill food recyclers, which dry and grind food scraps for use in a composting process or to be turned into chicken feed.

“New York is a city that cares deeply about food and has an amazing restaurant culture — and chefs deeply understand the importance of appreciating our food,” Harry Tannenbaum, Mill co-founder and president, told The Post.

The initiative comes just as the city will begin weekly composting for all apartment buildings in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island on October 6.

The latest step in the citywide rollout of the program — which began in Brooklyn and Queens earlier this year — will turn collected materials into renewable energy to heat homes or compost that is sold to landscapers and given away free to New Yorkers.

“It’s important because the world, whether we deny it or not, is changing,” Aidan O’Neal, chef at Le Crocodile, told The Post.

“Parts of food systems will collapse, and continuing to run any business in the status quo will inevitably lead to failure. There is a real opportunity to reframe luxury, away from being expensive and wasteful, to being creative and lavish. There’s a whole history of squeezing flavor out of every ounce of food we have, and going back to that is a wonderful thing.”