Some of Europe’s most acclaimed chefs will take turns next month in the kitchen of wastED, a new pop-up restaurant in London serving delicacies fashioned from food waste.
Gordon Ramsay, Clare Smyth and Tom Kerridge are just a few of the celebrity guest chefs who will be serving up normally discarded ingredients, although customers won’t know who will be cooking in advance, Bloomberg reports.
The London iteration of wastED, which was originally launched in Manhattan in 2015, will be spearheaded by Dan Barber, owner of the popular Blue Hill restaurant in New York. The London kitchen will be open from Feb. 24 to Apr. 2 on the rooftop of Selfridge’s department store.
Each day’s menu will change depending on what’s available; all ingredients will be sourced from leftover food items from farmers, distributors, restaurants, retailers and more, according to the project’s website. Dishes prepared for sharing will run around $18, while an unorthodox “high tea” set will be priced around $39.
The purpose of the project, Barber says, is to draw attention to food waste, a growing problem globally. About one third of all food produced annually is either lost or wasted, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization—about 1.3 billion tons, or, in monetary terms, abour $990 billion worth, most of it in richer, more developed countries.
While so much food is wasted, however, about one in every nine people is undernourished, the vast majority in developing countries in Asia and Africa.
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Barber, who made his name at the vanguard of New York’s farm-to-table movement, thinks more innovative use of food waste and an open mind about ingredients could catch on among foodies in places like the U.K.
“It’s all very exciting,” told Bloomberg in an interview at his New York restaurant. “To put together a menu in a different city is to be forced to learn about its history and its agricultural realities. And the food scene in London is very vibrant.”
“What I like about London is the openness to these ideas. The culture around food waste is fantastic—way ahead of America’s.”