Best of the Buzz : The Green Scene

Finger Fishing

BuzzEditor — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:21:00 GMT

iPhone's Seafood Watch App

Finding sustainable seafood just got a little easier thanks to two tech innovations pointed out to us by Joe Isidori of NYC's Harbour. With Blue Ocean Institute’s Fishphone, diners can find out about a particular seafood choice by texting 30644 with the message FISH and the name of the fish (or they can just visit fishphone.org). Meanwhile, iPhone users can download the Seafood Watch app from the Monterey Bay Aquarium for advice on environmentally aware eating; non-iPhone users can get the same info by going to mobile.seafoodwatch.org.

– Kathleen Squires

Going Green While Staying in the Black

BuzzEditor — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:01:00 GMT

Taranta's Jose Duarte saves cash by going green.

Photo: Courtesy of Taranta

In this economy, restaurant owners who are considering ways to make their establishments more eco-friendly may have apprehensions about the cost of such changes. Fortunately, a few restaurants around the country are proving that going green doesn’t necessarily mean less green in the pocket.

Eco-friendly building materials can actually help improve the bottom line. Restaurants like Plumed Horse in Saratoga, CA, and Jason’s Deli in Beaumont and Austin, TX, have been mindful of energy efficiency by installing solar panels. While the installation of the panels can be expensive, the cost is offset by rebate offers and future savings – in fact, Jason’s Deli saw its energy costs decrease by nearly 10% after installing solar panels.

The same can be said for energy-efficient lightbulbs, utilized by restaurants like Magnolia Bistro in Burlington, VT, and Upstairs on the Square in Cambridge, MA. Though they cost more than regular bulbs, one energy-efficient bulb can save around $30 or more per month in electricity costs.

One restaurant that’s taking eco-friendly practices to new heights – and reaping big savings as a result – is Boston’s Taranta. Chef-owner Jose Duarte says restaurants will find that being green “makes total business sense,” which he proved when he replaced paper towels with an energy efficient hand-dryer and wound up saving $1,300 each year.

He also installed low-flow pre-rinse spray valves for dishwashers, which save hundreds of gallons of water each day and up to $1,000 per year. Finally, by installing his own bottling and carbonation system for water, as opposed to using bottled water, Duarte hopes to save thousands of dollars a year in addition to limiting waste.

Taranta provides updates on its green changes on its blog, offering helpful tips and suggestions for restaurant owners with similar goals. Duarte also points out that the benefits of an eco-friendly approach go way beyond economics, saying it “not only saves you money, but also helps you reduce your carbon footprint, makes employees feel good about their job and assures loyal customers for the future.”

– Asha Chaudhuri

Eating Green

BuzzEditor — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:58:00 GMT

Photo: midorisyu

In recent months, world attention has been focused on the shaky economic situation rather than the myriad troubles facing our planet. Which is exactly why we celebrate Earth Day each year on April 22, to remind us to take care of our ultimate natural resource. But where to eat after attending one of the special events planned for the day? We've rounded up some eco-friendly options in the following cities:

Chefs Go Fishing for Sustainable Seafood

BuzzEditor — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:45:00 GMT

By Deirdre Donovan, ZAGAT.com Staff Editor

With new technologies, aquarium outreach programs and a local focus, more chefs are going green.

NYC chef Anita Lo serves Australis Barramundi.

Diners are riding a wave of awareness regarding threats to oceanlife – but they don’t always know what to do about it. When a recent ZAGAT.com poll asked, “Do concerns about over-fishing and other threats to seafood populations affect your dining decisions?” 54% of respondents said they “try to order sustainable seafood but can’t always keep track of what they are supposed to order.”

While there are ways for environmentally conscious diners to stay informed (see sidebar), chefs around the country are helping take the onus off customers by putting the “right” seafood on the menu. And since more than two-thirds (by value) of seafood consumed in the U.S. is eaten in restaurants, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, chefs have the potential to make a huge impact on the ocean’s health.

Find Your Fish

Organizations including Seafood Choices Alliance and Greenpeace offer charts and cards to help consumers make informed choices about the seafood on their plates. And some information has gone mobile – the status of an item on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch list can be checked via any handheld device, and the Blue Ocean Institute's FishPhone makes it easy to text for up-to-date info right from the table.

You don’t have to tell that to chef Ted Walter and wife Cindy, owners of Passionfish in Pacific Grove, CA. When they’re not preparing dishes featuring sustainable fish – for example, California sturgeon in charmoula marinade, or tilapia with garlic-balsamic-vinegar butter – they’re working to spread their mantra that "smart harvesting can strengthen global fish stocks" by offering public presentations, forums for culinary students and professionals, and through legislative advocacy. Cindy’s efforts helped lead to Pacific Grove’s adoption in 2005 of a Sustainable Seafood Resolution, making it one of only two cities to do so (San Francisco was the first). The resolution encourages restaurants and markets “to give preference to seafood harvested in a sustainable way” and to opt for local seafood.

Local is key at the East Coast Grill in Cambridge, MA, where chef-owner Chris Schlesinger, a fisherman himself, has long-standing relationships with providers that he trusts. “I stay informed about seafood stocks,” says Schlesinger, who features the likes of sea scallops from New Bedford, MA, harpooned swordfish and a daily fish that's "wicked fresh, wicked local" on his menu.

Seafood Choices Alliance partners with Charting Nature for illustrated posters with descriptions of sustainable fish and shellfish.

Growing your own can work too. San Francisco’s Hog Island Oyster Company raises its own Sweetwater, Atlantic and Kumomoto bivalves with sustainable methods in the Tomales Bay. Of course, not every restaurant can raise its own seafood. But there are plenty of other ways for toques to support healthy oceans.

Aquariums across the country have programs to promote sustainable seafood, including partnerships with restaurants. At Boston’s New England Aquarium, the Celebrate Seafood dinner series features sustainable seafood plus appearances by guest chefs from local restaurants like Beacon Hill Bistro, Chez Henri, Garden at the Cellar and Sel de la Terre. The evenings include cooking demos and discussions; the menus highlight wild-caught fish such as striped mullet, Alaskan salmon, mahi mahi, wahoo and bluefish along with responsibly farmed oysters, mussels, clams, bay scallops, barramundi and cobia.

In Chicago, the Shedd Aquarium’s Right Bite program not only partners with chefs for special dinners, but helps restaurants plan menus. Right Bite participants promise to have at least one sustainable seafood dish on their menus at all times and take off at least one unsustainable seafood item; their staffs receive special training twice a year. The program has attracted Carnivale, which features dishes like arctic char ceviche and Shaw’s Crab House, which serves items like sautéed Lake Erie Walleye with horseradish crust. Carrie Nahabedian has also signed up her top-rated Naha, whose sustainable dishes feature the likes of wild Great Lakes whitefish and native lobster.

Long a leader in ocean education, The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program began in 1999 as a way to raise consumer awareness. Sheila Bowman, the program’s outreach manager, explains that restaurants became involved when consumers, armed with seafood guides, went out to dinner and started asking questions. “At first chefs were like ‘What the heck is that aquarium doing?’” she says. But in the last two years a widespread shift occurred. “Chefs had started looking at where their beef, pork, produce, dairy and even wine came from before they started looking at seafood. Ultimately they looked at seafood,” says Bowman.

What is Sustainable Seafood?

SeaChoice describes it as "fish that are caught or farmed with consideration for the long-term viability of individual marine species and for the oceans’ ecological balance as a whole."

There’s now a restaurant component to Seafood Watch, with members pledging to eschew items from the organization’s “avoid” list. Participants include rm (Las Vegas), which brings the message to the table with farm-raised Ocean Rose Abalone and bigeye tuna that’s hook-and-line caught from a sustainable population in Hawaii; Ciudad (LA), where marinated white anchovy with lemon, garlic and parsley makes the menu; and Fish (Sausalito), which highlights seasonal fish, line-caught local albacore tuna and local Miyagi oysters.

Improved fish-farming techniques are another boon for sustainably minded chefs. Australis U.S.-farmed Barramundi, for example, is raised indoors with a special system that keeps the water clean. The fish meets environmental and sustainability standards and has been given a place on Seafood Watch’s “Best Choice” listing. It can be found on the menu at Napa’s famed French Laundry, where chef Thomas Keller serves it sautéed with potato confit, piquillo peppers, chorizo and arugula. At Charlie Palmer’s Las Vegas Aureole, it’s pan-seared and served with citrus-braised butter lettuce and carrot-orange reduction. In NYC, Anita Lo (Annisa) prepares it with artichokes, garlic chives and black trumpet sauce.

Kona Kampachi

Meanwhile, open-water aquaculture farms have modernized as well. Kona Kampachi, a Hawaiian yellowtail, is raised “from hatch to harvest” with improved nets and water monitoring systems, sustainable sources for feed and a harvest-to-order system that cuts waste. New York chef Dan Barber (Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns) offers it as a special in preparations such as crudo with panther soybeans and apple mustard. “Flavor is where we're leading with this stuff. I'm an environmentalist, but first and foremost, I'm a flavor guy...I decided to support this, getting behind the cause of how we want fish to be produced in the future," he says.

Ask Zagat: LEED Certified?

BuzzEditor — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:02:00 GMT

Got a dining question you're too embarrassed to ask your server about? Ask Zagat.

Green dining is all the rage these days, from Colorado (which is trying to "green" its restaurants before the Democratic Convention) to Chicago (where newcomer The Balanced Kitchen boasts eco-friendly details like sustainable bamboo, recycled glass and resin panels). The Buzz took a look at the greening of restaurants earlier this year, exploring five ways in which the industry is making like Kermit. One reader, however, recently noticed a spate of new eateries calling themselves "LEED" certified and wondered what it meant. So we turned to Ashley Katz of the USGBC (the U.S. Green Building Council) for more info:

Zagat Buzz: What exactly is LEED certification?

Ashley Katz: Basically the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is a voluntary building certification program, like the nutrition label on your food but for buildings. It shows how much energy is being used, how much water is being used, what the building is made of, where the materials came from, what the indoor environment is like and so on. We look at all those features and assign points in those areas. How many points a building accrues determines the building's level of certification, of which there are four (Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum). For restaurants, LEED certification offers diners a chance to be as picky about where they eat as they are about what they eat.

You can learn more about LEED certification here.

Do you have a dining question you'd like answered? Drop us a line at buzz@zagat.com!

Five Paths to a Greener Restaurant

BuzzEditor — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:08:00 GMT

By Deirdre Donovan, ZAGAT.com staff editor

The restaurant industry reinvents itself with an eco-conscious eye

London's Acorn House

Photo: Cindy Chen

The greening of the restaurant industry, an idealistic movement that took root decades ago, is now a global phenomenon encompassing both community-based eateries and splashy hot spots. And diners seem primed to appreciate environmentally sensitive cuisine – according to our 2007 America's Top Restaurants guide, 65% of surveyors said they would pay more for food that has been sustainably raised or procured.

But exactly what makes a restaurant green is open to interpretation. For some, it means menus emphasizing concepts like "local," "sustainable" and "organic." For others, it means harnessing alternative energy sources (bicycle-powered blender, anyone?) or banning bottled water.

Below are some ways in which restaurants are going green, followed by a list of resources for the conscientious epicure.

Know Your Sources

One of the most common ways restaurants embrace the green movement is by cultivating relationships with area farmers, a simple idea with far-reaching impact pioneered by Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, which opened in 1971. Today the restaurant works with 60-plus farms, and Waters continues to lead from the front with the Chez Panisse Foundation, which promotes food awareness in public schools.

No longer limited to bohemian Berkeley, responsible food sourcing is now practiced at big-ticket eateries coast-to-coast. In LA, Grace’s Neal Fraser sources 90% of his ingredients from local ranchers who provide their animals with healthy diets and local farmers who reject pesticides. In the Chicago area, Vie's Paul Virant exclusively uses meat and dairy products raised humanely with 100% vegetarian feed and no hormones or chemicals. Celebrity chef Laurent Tourondel’s new BLT Market in NYC’s Ritz-Carlton Central Park features a monthly changing menu focused on first-of-the-season produce and wild and unusual items grown locally.

Some toques are following Waters' lead by promoting social change outside of the kitchen: Ted Walter (Passionfish in Pacific Grove, CA) advocates for sustainable seafood awareness, while Peter Hoffman (NYC's Savoy) works closely with both Chefs Collaborative, a national network of sustainably minded food professionals, and NYC’s Greenmarket.

Become a Farmer

Some restaurants take the farm-to-table movement a step further and grow their own food. When Dan Barber opened NYC’s Blue Hill in 2000, he supplied part of the restaurant’s produce from his Berkshires family farm. Four years later he expanded that vision by opening Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant and educational center on a diversified organic farm 30 miles up the Hudson River where the entire menu comes from ingredients grown or raised on-site. Similarly, Farm 255 in Athens, GA, uses produce from its own seven-acre biodynamic farm as a way to “reconnect food to its roots and people to their food.”

Real estate at a premium? No problem. Growing your own doesn’t require acres of land. Rick Bayless of Chicago’s Frontera Grill and Topolobampo grows chiles and tomatoes, mainstays of his menu, up on the restaurants' roof.

Reduce Waste

Restaurants are finding creative ways to make better use of their limited resources. Hugo Matheson and Kimbal Musk, owners of The Kitchen in Boulder, CO, are particularly innovative when it comes to reducing waste. For example, sacks from their coffee roaster are passed to a local farm where they’re used for vegetable storage over winter. Vegetables from the farm then go to the restaurant. The Kitchen claims to eliminate close to 100% of its refuse thanks to such methods, along with mindful food preparation and vigorous composting and recycling.

Another fan of using more and disposing less is Chris Cosentino of San Francisco’s Incanto; he promotes nose-to-tail eating with an adventurous menu prepared in a kitchen that throws away no animal parts. Also in San Francisco, Jardinière recycles or composts almost 85% of its waste and plans to list composting locations on its Web site to help its neighbors do the same.

Increase Energy Efficiency

According to the Green Restaurant Association, restaurants use 33% of the electricity gobbled up by U.S. businesses each year. Alternative power can help offset this. Colorado wind farms provide electricity to the lean and clean Kitchen – the restaurant even donates all leftover cooking oils to a biodiesel-fuel-using neighbor.

In New Brunswick, NJ, The Frog and the Peach recently mounted 58 solar panels on its roof that it hopes will generate 20–25% of its electricity and eliminate 24,000 pounds in carbon dioxide emissions yearly.

Other energy innovators include Chicago’s Hannah's Bretzel, which makes its deliveries with a fuel-efficient, low-emission MINI Cooper; NYC's Del Posto, which recently announced it will join Chez Panisse and others in eliminating bottled water; and the Brooklyn outpost of Café Habana, which uses kinetic energy from a bicycle to power its blender.

Use Eco-minded Products

Restaurants can reduce their impact on the environment by avoiding the use of harmful chemicals and finding alternative sources for common materials. LA's Abode was built using wood planks reclaimed from a 200-year-old Temecula farm. London's Acorn House keeps spruce with eco-friendly cleaning products. And the tables at Chicago’s organic pizza lounge Crust are constructed from recycled tires.

Additional Resources:
Chefs Collaborative
Chez Panisse Foundation
Eat Wild
Green Restaurant Association
Michael Pollan
Seafood Watch
SeaWeb
Slow Food USA
Sustainable Table
Watch the creation of London's Acorn House
What to Eat

Wanted: Small Farms, Big Flavors

BuzzEditor — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:37:00 GMT

Sona's tomato salad with purslane

Step into the kitchen at LA's Sona, and David Myers – the restaurant's visionary chef-owner – will proudly show you a rolling rack on which slightly odd-looking fruits and vegetables are carefully, even lovingly, arranged.

"They're foraged for us from small farms up and down the coast," he says. "These are farms too small to show up at the farmer's markets. They grow produce of extraordinary quality."

Myers is one of an increasing number of California chefs discovering wonderful stuff growing on small plots and in backyards – irregularly shaped produce with a fine, fresh flavor. Occasionally a passionate local gardener will show up at a restaurant's back door selling such booty. But increasingly it is professional foragers buying these crops from small farmers, then rushing them to chefs who prefer quality over quantity – among them, Jimmy Boyce at Studio in Laguna Beach's Montage Resort & Spa, Lee Hefter at Spago, Suzanne Goin at Lucques and A.O.C. and, of course, the queen of foraged produce, Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley.

"Part of the fun," says Myers, "is that you never know what's coming in. You have to improvise. That's when cooking becomes like jazz."

– Merrill Shindler

B.R. Guest Restaurants Go Green

BuzzEditor — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:11:00 GMT

Last week, B.R. Guest Restaurants announced that all 12 of its NY eateries – including Dos Caminos, Fiamma Osteria and Ruby Foo's – had achieved "certification of green status" by the Green Restaurant Association, a national nonprofit that promotes environmental practices in the industry.

In addition to beefing up its recycling program to include cardboard, glass, plastic and metals, the restaurants have also installed water-efficient faucets and banned Styrofoam products. Future steps will include switching to recycled materials for use in everything from menus to packaging to restroom paper products. B.R. Guest eateries in Chicago and Las Vegas are also expected to participate in the program.

San Francisco Restaurants Banned From Using Styrofoam

BuzzEditor — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:14:00 GMT

Do you agree that restaurants should be prohibited from using Styrofoam to-go containers? Does this ban go too far or not far enough?

Tell us what you think on the Zagat Discussion boards!

Eating out – and taking out – just got a whole lot greener. As of Friday, June 1st, San Francisco restaurants and food vendors are no longer allowed to use Styrofoam "food service ware" (e.g. take-out containers), thanks to the Food Service Waste Reduction Ordinance.

However, you may still spot Styrofoam around town because establishments are required to replace it with compostable (paper- or plant-based bio-plastic) or recyclable (e.g. aluminum) products only if it is affordable to do so. Affordable in this case means within 15 percent of the cost of Styrofoam goods.

NYC's Del Posto to Nix Bottled Water by Summer's End

BuzzEditor — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:58:00 GMT

Do restaurants have a responsibility to the environment?

Tell us what you think on the Zagat Discussion boards!

In March, Alice Waters' famed Chez Panisse restaurant announced it would no longer sell bottled water due to environmental concerns over waste, not only from packaging but from transporting it too. Now other restaurants are following suit, including Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich's Del Posto, which plans to stop selling the bottled stuff by the end of this summer.

According to Bastianich, the restaurant will neutralize and purify NYC's finest through reverse osmosis, then add minerals and salts back into it to create a signature flavor profile. It won't come free, and while the price has yet to be determined, there will likely be a flat, per-person water charge. Says Bastianich: "To spend fossil fuel trucking water around the world is absurd....Water should be as local as anything gets."