Professional chef transforms garbage into high-end cuisine in new multicourse menu: 'It's becoming a global trend'

Restaurants around the world are turning kitchen scraps into gourmet dishes, tackling the problem of food waste while serving up creative cuisine, reported Bloomberg.

Over 1 billion tons of edible food are thrown out globally each year. Dining spots, from sit-down eateries to office cafeterias, make up roughly 30% of this waste, a 2024 United Nations Environment Programme report found.

But a growing number of chefs are proving that what once went into the bin can become the star of the plate.

At HAGS in New York City's East Village, Telly Justice runs the kitchen and co-owns the space. She has built her menu around ingredients most kitchens would throw away. 

Her tasting menu is priced up to $135 for vegan selections and $160 for omnivores. It features dishes like mushroom grits made with ground-up trimmings and a broth built from leftover squash pieces. Pulp from tomato-cucumber water gets roasted and mixed into vegan butter for the bread course.

The approach makes sense for the planet and for business. Food prices are climbing as extreme weather takes its toll. Using every part of an ingredient helps restaurants stretch their budgets while cutting down on waste.

This philosophy is catching on at high-end restaurants worldwide. Eateries focused on eliminating waste have popped up in cities including Lisbon, Bali, and Washington, D.C. They're all finding inventive ways to use ingredients that would typically be discarded.

For home cooks, the same ideas work. Vegetable scraps can become stock, stale bread works as croutons or breadcrumbs, and overripe fruit blends well into smoothies or baked goods.

"It's becoming a global trend slowly," said Douglas McMaster, as reported by Bloomberg. 

McMaster runs Silo in London, a restaurant frequently credited as the first dining room built around eliminating waste.
Justice believes the key is changing how we think about food scraps. In her words, tossing edible food amounts to "a failure of imagination."

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