What Fine Dining Looks Like With Absolutely No Plastic
A Washington, DC, chef is working to banish plastic entirely from his restaurant, and craft a cost-benefit analysis for other restaurants working to do the same.
Illustration: Isabella Cotier for Bloomberg
The modern fine-dining plate is enabled by plastic. The artful sauce squiggles? They’re delivered via plastic squeeze bottles. Those otherworldly food shapes? Crafted by silicone molds. And that’s not counting the many plastic implements that never touch the plate: spatulas, cutting boards and plastic-handled knives and pans.
The restaurant industry’s reliance on plastic “has become more and more drastic over the years,” says Edward Lee, a former Iron Chef America contestant whose book Buttermilk Graffiti (Artisan, 2018) won a James Beard Foundation Book Award. “It’s not necessary. It’s just that it’s so convenient and it’s so prevalent and it’s everywhere that we don’t even think about it.”