Did you know, the UK food service industry now produces over one million tonnes of waste annually? Making it more important than ever to support restaurants that are putting a focus on sustainability.
Some have even created entirely new dishes from previously discarded ingredients, making for one of a kind dining experiences. So why not gather your friends and family together and explore St James’s most creative and sustainable cuisines?
Café Murano’s no-waste pasta
Nestling between bustling Piccadilly to the north, and leafy St James’s Park to the south, is Angela Hartnett’s Café Murano. Start your journey by booking a table to sample the unmissable new Maltagliati dish (the name translates as ‘poorly cut’ in Italian): hailing from the Emilia-Romagna region, it consists of irregularly shaped offcuts from the fresh egg tagliatelle made in-house each day. These are winningly topped with a sauce made using rocket stems and leftover cheeses to create a creamy, earthy dish with a hint of pepperiness.
Scully’s fresh take on tartare
Tucked away in nearby St James’s Market, this conscious restaurant, owned by celebrated chef Ramael Scully, is perfect for a special dinner. His layered heritage – from a childhood in Malaysia to extensive travels in the Middle East and Russia, via Sydney – has resulted in a global menu that explores food items that would otherwise be thrown away. One such example is the rarely used beef rump cap, here aged for 28 days and turned into Scully’s delicate Tonto’s Tartare. The kitchen has also examined its supply chain, with food suppliers sharing other restaurants’ excess with the team to further spark creativity and avoid waste.
Ole & Steen
Need a quick healthy lunchtime break while out shopping with friends? Right on the corner of St James's Market lies an all day bakery from Denmark, Ole & Steen, serving up delicious bakery items and deli sandwiches. At the end of each day, unsold bakery items are repurposed to create other products, for example, its Seeded Rye Loaf is thinly sliced, sprinkled with sea salt and oven-baked to perfection to create crunchy Rye Crisps; making it the ultimate formula of no waste and great taste.
Why not do your bit for the planet and help tackle a global issue by tucking into these consciously created dishes or explore more tempting highlights from our restaurants in neighbouring Regent Street including Frescobaldi, which has now halved its bread waste by 50%, and Hawksmoor, whose mixologists now turn flat Prosecco into cordials and create its Potted Beef recipe using leftover beef trimmings.