Sugarvine

There’s been a bit of a buzz (you may be forgiven for missing it) about the newest environmentally-friendly restaurant in London Town. Curiously ignoring Acorn House and its kin who have been quietly beavering away for some years on the eco-front, the press have made much of Otarian, a small vegetarian snack bar-cum-restaurant chain opened by Delhi-born Radhika Oswal, who claims it’s the first restaurant to display ‘cradle-to-grave carbon footprints’ for each and every item on the menu.

Great, we say. According to her website each ingredient is painstakingly sourced on the ‘proximity principle’; ie, there’s a no airfreight policy, ingredients are sourced as locally and seasonally as possible and there’s much made of allergy-friendly dishes too. (We shall gloss over the fact their mayonnaise is clearly bought in - check the ingredients on the website - and her statement in a recent Sunday magazine that she doesn’t necessarily source locally or organically as it can ‘throw up some surprises’...). The intention – primarily to provide vegetarian food on the basis that meat is planet murder and to state its total environmental impact – is in keeping with the zeitgeist; whether the practice lives up to the theory is another question.

In the same week was BBC1’s TV programme Great British Waste Menu. Bluntly put, four chefs were put to the task of creating a stunning dinner using only ingredients that were due to be thrown away. This included quite literally throwing themselves into retailers’ bins, tracking down eggs too small for sale, picking up discarded fruit and veg from the street markets and so on. Most noteworthy about the whole operation was the quality of the discarded goods; all perfectly fit for consumption, just not quite in date or perfect looking enough for customers’ own fastidious quality control.

So here we have a most peculiar situation: restaurants whose entire USP is based on carbon impact and yet spend a probable fortune buying in only top-quality ‘local, seasonal’ ingredients and £12 million worth of still-usable fruit, vegetables and much more besides chucked every year by retailers, suppliers, farmers and customers on the basis that once the day is over, the food is suddenly unfit for purpose.

A quiet suggestion: how about – instead of banging on about the carbon footprint of tomatoes – restaurants, pubs and people start addressing first-hand sourcing and reducing food waste at the same time? Instead of daily ordering the same ingredients from your suppliers, check out what’s around at the end of the day, or what they wouldn’t instinctively sell you because it’s too small/not round or red enough. All that food could be bought for a song and processed into gorgeous dishes fit for any discerning palate – footprints don’t get much tinier than that.

I sympathize, I really do, but what you are advocating is that restaurants buy up produce that's past its sell-by date and serve it up to customers. It makes for a good hour's entertainment on TV but would you really want to eat at a venue that sourced its food this way??