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With new app-controlled bins and curbside composting available to Brooklyn and Queens residents, and expansion to the remaining boroughs underway, it has become increasingly easy for New Yorkers to ensure that their food scraps get a second life (although the program has not been without growing pains or controversy).
Even some NYC bars looking to cut down waste have joined in on composting in an unexpected way—by drawing inspiration from extra seasonal ingredients already found in-house, rather than throwing them out.
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According to the National Restaurant Association, the industry produces between 22 and 33 billion pounds of food waste a year. This amount of waste can have obvious environmental and financial impacts. “You really get to see waste at its highest degree when you have guests coming in to pay ridiculous amounts of money,” Tia Barrett, general manager of Hav & Mar, says about fine dining.
Barrett saw an opportunity when designing her bar program to streamline the ingredients coming in, create seasonal harmony on the menu and reduce overall waste. Her Seashore Spritz is made with discarded apple and celery juice made during kitchen prep. Even the unused celery leaves are given a chance to shine as a garnish. And this isn’t the only drink where the menu is utilizing kitchen waste—leftover pickling liquid finds its way into the restaurant’s martini as a brine.
Across the river, another bar is giving ingredients a second life in unique ways. Mr. Melo in Brooklyn has an entire “compost cocktail” section on its menu that includes a feta brine martini. Owner Nikolas Vagenas says that friends and family urge him not to advertise the cocktails so brazenly on his menu out of fear that it would turn drinkers off. But customers have reacted positively to the creations. One customer even told Vagenas that he should be charging more for the compost cocktails because of their environmental efforts. The ‘compost cocktails’ are currently priced $2 cheaper than the house cocktails because of the waste saved with the practice.
Each cocktail on Mr. Melo’s compost menu also has a corresponding snack. Its housemade chips and dips feature three dips that share ingredients with the three cocktails on the menu. The aforementioned feta brine martini works especially well with the spicy whipped feta dip. The martini has a smooth delicate quality and the dip delivers a kick when the two elements are brought back together. The menu also boast a miso baba dip that corresponds to the baba rita, a margarita featuring smoked eggplant infused tequila, and a curry hummus that correspond to a citra dacq, a tropical cocktail that gets its kick from tangy preserved orange juice.
Vagenas is always looking for new ways to expand this menu. He looks forward to collaborating with chefs on food pop-ups and using whatever discarded ingredients they have into special cocktails. “Let me know what you’re wasting and let’s put that into the cocktail and make some cool stuff,” he says.
Back in Manhattan—Jopus Grevelink, senior beverage director of Nubeluz by José Andrés at The Ritz-Carlton NoMad, has found a way to marry showmanship and sustainability with his eye-catching “cloud” garnishes.
His Foggy Hill Negroni features an aromatic cloud instead of the usual citrus peel garnish. This cloud is made of leftover citrus peels and trimmings of thyme that are collected from the prep team and bar team and then made into a tea that is then made into a fragrant cloud with the use of dry ice. Grevelink describes the effect as “a blast of orange peel oil and thyme right on top of your drink and in your nose.”
Grevelink and his team were inspired by a seminar at the 2023 Tales of the Cocktail held by culinary technology innovator Dave Arnold.
The Foggy Hill Negroni is not the only cocktail on the menu with this composted cloud element. The Melon Cloud is a tequila-based drink that also features an aromatic cloud that has been made in part by a blend of reused tea bags. These drinks are not denoted as being the byproduct of reusing ingredients on the menu. However, Grevelink muses about that possibility, “I love how daring it is to call them compost cocktails…it almost makes me want to call some of our clouds ‘compost clouds’ and see what the reaction is, just for the fun,” he says.
Whether the sustainable efforts are denoted on the menu, they’ve made an impact on the way these bar owners, directors, and managers are approaching ingredients and waste when designing their drinks.
Barrett sums up the philosophy in one idea, “How do we keep this world fruitful?”