A Restaurant That Serves Gourmet Meals From Scraps

Almost every dish chef Douglas McMaster concocts contains the remnants of another. The fish sauce he drizzles over leeks for a starter on his current seasonal menu comes from boiling down cuttlefish remains; an entree that consists of potato, seaweed, and crème fraîche flavored with coffee and kombucha gets its hint of java from the husks of roasted coffee beans; and his dessert sandwich contains ice cream from the buttermilk left over from making butter, a wafer of wheat husks from bread-making, and a salted caramel-like syrup that’s the fermented prize of soaking surplus bread for two days.

McMaster is waging war against waste at Silo, which he opened as head chef in 2019 in East London’s hip Hackney Wick neighborhood. It continues the zero-waste concept of his first restaurant, in Brighton, England—also called Silo—which he opened in 2014 and closed to move to the capital. Silo London’s interior is designed with recycled or recyclable materials—the lampshades are made of seaweed, the bar of reused plastic, the cutlery holders of crushed wine bottles. Local farmers supply the ingredients and collect what diners don’t eat to make compost. McMaster uses every scrap he can in his dishes, which also feature invasive species such as crayfish. “We try to remove the human wasting component, such as using plastic or throwing too much food away,” McMaster says.