A chef’s manifesto: let’s tackle food waste with good fare

Dan Barber: 'If you think not leaving your plate full of food is the way to deal with this issue, you're letting yourself off too easy.'

Waste is central to Dan Barber's cooking, and yet, he'd rather you didn't sense that when you eat it. In fact, if you're experiencing anything other than sublime thoughts when you taste his food, he'll consider it an unsuccessful dish. Barber is the executive chef at the famed Bluehill Restaurant in Manhattan and at Stone Barns in upstate New York, and author of The Third Plate, a book about sustainable cuisine that captures his core belief: instead of just telling people to cut food waste, we should also be using it to make irresistibly tasty dishes.

To meet this goal, in March, Barber transformed his restaurant into a pop-up called wastED, where he served 'fried skate-wing cartilage', 'pock-marked potatoes' and 'carrot top marmalade', along with other almost-binned fare. Continuing the theme, in September, he and Sam Kass, former senior advisor for nutrition policy at the White House and now senior food analyst for NBC News, made headlines when they served 'waste food' to world leaders meeting at the United Nations. Barber and Kass-who first came up with the idea for the momentous lunch-created salads comprised of vegetable scraps, burgers formed from wasted beetroot juice pulp, and fries repurposed from corn intended to feed cows. The goal? To use taste to drive home the message of food waste-something that Barber says should be central to the waste debate. In conversation, he makes the case that chefs are key to accomplishing this goal-and explains why 'waste meals' really aren't such a novel idea after all.