Did Dan Barber’s Food Waste Pop-Up Make a Difference?

For a few weeks this March, New Yorkers lined up outside a trendy Greenwich Village restaurant for a chance to pay $15 a plate for food that most would consider garbage. The event in question was wastED, the innovative and ambitious dining project from chef and author Dan Barber, who transformed his restaurant, Blue Hill, into a pop-up aimed at showing the dining world how much could be done with scraps, leftovers, and industrial byproducts.

The 20-plus item menu included items like kale rib stew, pasta trimmings, and dog food, and came with a glossary that doubled as an education on all the perfectly edible food that we don’t eat—from broken razor clams to immature eggs.

The restaurant’s walls were draped with the soft white fabric used to protect crop rows from the cold, wind, and pests; a line of high tables in the middle of the room were grown from compostable materials and mycelium. Even the candles on the table were made from beef tallow—which, in a neat trick, was poured into a ramekin later in the meal to be eaten with bread made from spent grain from a Brooklyn brewery...

Get the full article, "Did Dan Barber’s Food Waste Pop-Up Make a Difference?" on Civil Eats.

The views expressed here belong to the speaker and do not necessarily represent Food Well Alliance.