Bartenders Are the Ultimate Waste Fighters in Restaurants
Sneak into Chicago’s Indienne as the team is preparing for dinner service, and you might see head mixologist Akshar Chalwadi behind the bar tossing fish parts from the kitchen into a vat of gin.
The Indian fine-dining restaurant features sea bass and smoked salmon on its menu, but those dishes leave behind byproducts that Chalwadi thinks could be valuable and delicious. So, he takes whatever is leftover—bones and other trimmings from the sea bass, tiny pieces of smoked salmon—and infuses them into gin for a fat-washed cocktail that refuses to waste even the tiniest scrap of food.
Combined with an egg white replacement called Fee Foam and dill cordial, which contains leftover bits of herbs and cucumber skins from the kitchen, it makes for a drink that is fresh and vegetal with just the right amount of salinity—all while putting the bar’s creativity to the ultimate test.
“Waste becomes flavor,” Chalwadi says. “It’s both a creative challenge and a rewarding exercise to find ways to transform what would typically be considered waste into purposeful, flavor-enhancing ingredients.”
At Indienne and other restaurants across the country, bartenders are fighting waste by using, then reusing, their go-to ingredients, as well as repurposing leftovers from the kitchen—not only to be environmentally conscious, but to save money and flex their creativity.
From a Trend to a Necessity
When eliminating waste isn’t a priority, bartenders discard quite a bit at the end of the night. Fruit is squeezed for its juice, then thrown away. Egg whites are mixed into cocktails, then yolks and shells hit the trash. Wine that is opened to pour by the glass that becomes too oxidized to serve is poured down the drain.
Chalwadi points out that zero-waste cocktails aren’t anything new. But amid skyrocketing food costs and mounting environmental concerns, he says, “they’ve become more urgent as sustainability shifts from a trend to a necessity in hospitality.”
According to an estimate from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), one third of food produced in the U.S. is never eaten, and that wasted food makes up 24% of landfills across the country. As that material slowly decomposes, it gives off methane gas, which is one of the largest contributors to climate change.
Creativity for a Cause
While infusing a drink with fishy flavor in the name of sustainability may seem extreme, many bartenders are getting creative in the fight against food waste. More bars across the country are recognizing that after an orange peel is used to garnish a Negroni and the juice is squeezed for a Garibaldi, the leftover pulp can be infused into a cordial to make a totally distinct third cocktail.
At Providence, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Los Angeles that was also awarded a green star for its dedication to sustainability, bar manager Kim Stodel sees zero-waste cocktails as a way to test the limits of his team’s creativity.
The tableside Electric Margarita seems like a simple drink on the surface. But instead of fresh lime juice, the bar uses passionfruit cordial made from rinds that are typically destined for the trash. Stodel jokes that this twist on a Cadillac Margarita, which still uses top-shelf spirits while swapping in a more sustainable citrus element, runs on electric instead of gasoline like an old car.
“It’s a little more sustainably minded and more thoughtful about the use of fresh ingredients,” he says. “We really want to maximize the potential of the whole fruit, not just part of it.”
It’s a Win-Win
Fred Beebe is the co-owner of Post Haste, a Philadelphia bar that strictly uses local ingredients—everything comes from east of the Mississippi River—to reduce the “immeasurable impact” that global shipping has on the environment. Beebe says that many beloved products are actually just byproducts.
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“Kingsford Charcoal was invented as a way to utilize sawdust and mill waste from the original Model T Ford factories,” he says, “and Tater Tots were devised as a recipe for Ore-Ida to use leftover slivers of cut potatoes that would otherwise be thrown away.”
That thriftiness has inspired his team at Post Haste to see how much they can squeeze out of each and every ingredient purchased for the bar. Beebe says the team has become experts at freezing, infusing, acidifying and preserving ingredients with salt, sugar or vinegar so they can both stretch the seasonality of their hyper-local menu and reduce the amount of waste product.
“It’s not only a good move in terms of sustainability,” he says. “But it is also the smart business decision.”
In recent years, inflation has pummeled restaurants and bars. Food costs have gone up 29% as labor costs have risen at nearly the same rate, according to data from the National Restaurant Association.
“If we can get a secondary use out of a product, then it’s basically free product,” Beebe says. “Why not use it?”
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