Food waste has become a national topic of conversation over the past few years, thanks in no small part to restaurant chefs who are leading the way toward a more sustainable industry—with considerable help from their friends behind the bar. I talked to a trio of hospitality pros striving to shrink their footprint on three beverage-related fronts.
Key Ingredients
“Because we’re creating drinks to pair with food,” says Nick Talarico, director of operations at The Gray Canary in Memphis, “it makes sense to work off what the kitchen’s working with. If the kitchen’s using plums, we can use plums; if they’re not, we don’t.” The bonus is that “we’re able to use more than they can.” In addition to scraps, “we can take the ingredients that aren’t as pretty, the stuff whose shelf life is coming to an end, and do a lot of things—infuse spirits, make cordials and bitters.”Case in point: the as-yet-unnamed corn cocktail they’re developing. While chef-owners Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman utilize the kernels, lead bartender David Hacking mixes mezcal, bourbon, Curaçao, Cocchi Americano, and lime juice with both jelly and bitters produced from the spent cobs. “We use them twice,” Talarico points out, “which is something the kitchen has taught us: ‘Let’s think about it before we throw it in the trash can.’”
