Darwin & Wallace

• WHO: Mel Marriott, managing director
• WHAT: A unique collection of independent neighbourhood bars, more home than high street
• WHERE: 197-199 Chiswick High Rd, Chiswick, London, UK: plus other locations

“Darwin & Wallace are proud to have achieved a three-star SRA rating for their sustainable practices, including celebrating local and seasonal food and sourcing better fish for a healthy ocean. Darwin and Wallace are also rated highly for their campaign to reduce food wastage, reducing and recycling wherever possible and we are committed as a business to these practices. Fish on the menu is selected by lesser-known species and additionally, we removed cod from the menu when it was taken off the sustainable list.

“When creating Darwin & Wallace we wanted to do everything we could to help and to have the least amount of impact on the environment. We only use GM-free rapeseed oil in our kitchens, which is then converted to bio-fuel and we recycle all waste. Right from beginning we have committed our suppliers to taking packaging away with them if they are unable to deliver in re-usable containers. Paper Round provide the means to split waste into three different recycling streams along with 100 per cent traceability.”

Events & News:

Nº35 Mackenzie Walk, the eighth bar in the Darwin & Wallace collection is opening in the bustling Canary Wharf district on 29 October. Offering seasonal serves, craft beers and house wines alongside scratch cooked, sustainable plates, to be shared with friends. Find out all you need to know here.

Celebrate the festive season with Darwin & Wallace: "Festivities begin on 25 November at Darwin & Wallace’s collection of independent bars. From Champagne breakfasts to festive drinks and nibbles and fireside dinner parties, there’s a menu for all kinds of celebrations. Or treat yourself to a Festive Champagne Breakfast which includes a selection of five breakfast favourites, sweet and savoury, to enjoy amongst friends. for the perfect weekend get together. Contact reservations now, and they’ll help you plan your perfect Christmas party."

To read more about Darwin and Wallace, visit their Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery profile here.

5 Points Market & Restaurant

• WHO: Jasper Ludwig & Brian Haskins, owners
• WHAT: Restaurant, market & bakery
• WHERE: 756 South Stone Avenue, Tucson, Pima, Arizona, USA

“We love imperfect produce and people – it's what makes the day fun! Perfection is boring and definitely not sustainable. Our bakery uses regionally grown and milled organic grains, organic sugar, local free-range eggs and we get local in-season bumper crops of fruit, process and freeze them.

“Local and regionally-specific ingredients play a huge role in our menu and creative process. We're lucky to live and work in a place with year-round growing seasons, a very unique climate and very unique, edible plants such as, Nopal, prickly pear, mesquite, cholla cactus flower buds, barrel cactus fruit, white Sonora wheat berries, chiltepin peppers and tepary beans. We're lucky to work with a number of organizations that harvest these native foods and also other small businesses that utilize local, native foods and medicinal herbs in their products."

To read more about 5 Points Market & Restaurant, visit their Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery profile here.

5 Points Market & Restaurant (Tucson, Pima, Arizona, USA)

Indulge

• WHO: Mitchell White, owner/chef
• WHAT: A cosy bistro with pride in its region’s people & produce
• WHERE: 80 Bourbong Street, Bundaberg Central, Queensland, Australia

“We offer seasonally-changing menus to suit the best quality ingredients, with suppliers calling us when they have a fresh catch of sustainable fish or special meats and organic vegetables. We also grow all of our own herbs behind the restaurant. We have a great relationship with our producers and the conversation between about what we’re doing and what’s next.

“We try to let our food speak for itself, so customers are eating it without us having altered it much. It also means there is little food wastage, and we have compost bins for what fruit and vegetable waste there is.”

To read more about Indulge, visit their Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery profile here.

Indulge (Bundaberg Central, Queensland, Australia)

Willem Hiele

• WHO: Willem Hiele, chef & Shannah Zeebroek, sommelier
• WHAT: Gastronomic restaurant in Belgium
• WHERE: Pylyserlaan 138, 8670 Koksijde, Belgium

“Worldwide, a third of the food we produce is lost. That’s not just a shame, it’s a real waste. So, more and more Flemish chefs are trying to reduce their ecological footprint. That’s one of the main reasons why I’m strongly supporting the NorthSeaChefs initiative. We act as ambassadors and encourage chefs, hobby cooks and consumers to explore unpopular and lesser-known fish, caught by Belgian fishermen, in a responsible way. As a freshly elected NorthSeaChef, I will be part of the research team for two years. Go sustainable fishing!

“We have a garden nearby where we grow our vegetables and herbs ourselves. There is a lot of nature around this place. Every product that enters our restaurant is made sustainably by local farmers and is fair trade. When it comes to meat, we try to buy the whole animal and work nose-to-tail. To work with the products from around you gives you so much freedom because nature has so much to offer you. The search for products (the best products there are!!) is a never-ending search.”

To read more about Willem Hiele, visit their Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery profile here.

Willem Hiele (Koksijde, Belgium)

Brazen Open Kitchen

• WHO: Kevin Scharpf, chef/owner
• WHAT: Brazen is an open, from-scratch kitchen creating honest food sourced locally
• WHERE: 955 Washington Street, Suite 101, Dubuque, Iowa, USA

“At Brazen, we take pride in creating an authentic, progressive, yet approachable menu highlighting the seasonally fresh ingredients available in the Midwest.

“We have our own garden located ten miles from the restaurant and a garden manager who also doubles as a prep cook. Brazen sources as much locally as possible from our awesome farmers and forgers. For example, our microgreens are from a small start-up business – when we first opened we told her to grow them and we would buy them. She now sources many local restaurants and has a growing thriving business.”

To read more about Brazen Open Kitchen, visit their Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery profile here.

Brazen Open Kitchen (Dubuque, Iowa, USA)

The Bay Fish & Chips

• WHO: Calum Richardson, owner/founder
• WHAT: Fish & chip shop located on the seafront in the rural Aberdeenshire town of Stonehaven
• WHERE: Beach Road, Stonehaven, Aberdeen, Scotland

“Eighty-nine per cent of all our ingredients are sourced from within a fifty-mile radius – this helps the business to dramatically reduce food miles, supports the local economy and ultimately makes the business more sustainable and environmentally friendly. All fish sold are caught in the wild, but sometimes are marked with (F) to let customers know that they’re from sustainably farmed sources. Coley (or Pollock) MSC is now a staple of the menu, and as more fish are certified by the MSC we extend our menu in response to this.

“Our in-store menu and our unique real-time app detail the nutritional information and the provenance of every dish sold. Customers like that our menu tells them the name of the boat that landed their fish that day, and the farm that grew the potatoes for their chips. We promote full traceability, from sea to plate and from field to fork. All food waste is recycled and turned into high-grade compost. Any cardboard, glass or paper used is recycled and all waste oil is accounted for, uplifted and turned into biofuel for a local delivery truck."

The Bay becomes UK's first fish & chip shop to pay living wage

In a first for the UK fish and chip shop industry, The Bay has announced its commitment to paying employees the ‘Real Living Wage’. The Bay has received the accreditation from the Living Wage Foundation, a charity which sets out to improve earnings for all.

The Stonehaven-based chippy, which was voted Britain’s best eating experience by Lonely Planet last year, employs twenty-two team members in its busy sea-front shop. Findings from the Living Wage Foundation have revealed that hospitality is the largest low-paid sector in Scotland with sixty-seven per cent of employees receiving less than the real cost of living.

As part of the accreditation, Calum Richardson will join a Living Wage Hospitality Steering Group to help increase wages for Scotland’s lowest paid workers.

To read more about The Bay Fish & Chips, visit their Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery profile here.

The Bay Fish & Chips crew (Stonehaven, Aberdeen, Scotland)

Pasture

• WHO: Ed & Laura Verner, co-owners
• WHAT: A small, independent restaurant focused around an open kitchen & fire
• WHERE: 3/235 Parnell Rd, Auckland, New Zealand

“We are a very small, open-kitchen restaurant and serve one set menu designed for the season and driven by our wood-fire, fermentation and time. Our philosophy is to work with whole animals, seafood, and line-caught fish. We practice our own preservation, charcuterie, dry-aging, baking and cheesemaking.

“We are a vegetable-forward establishment. We have six worm farms and we support a small, local company to collect and commercially compost our green waste. We sort and pay for our soft plastic and polystyrene to be collected and commercially recycled. From our butter to our bread, to vinegars and ferments, we make as much as we possibly can in-house. We use manuka wood (an abundant wood source in New Zealand) from managed forests as our main cooking fuel.”

To read more about Pasture, visit their Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery profile here.

Pasture (Auckland, New Zealand)