These two creative restaurants in Thailand deliver full flavour with zero waste
Great chefs create tantalising menus from humble ingredients. The truly good ones turn waste scraps or nature’s pests into fine dining delicacies – all in the name of reducing food waste. In Thailand, two new restaurants are either working directly with farmers or re-imagining waste.
Situated in an old shophouse just a few minutes away from Bangkok’s Chinatown, Electric Sheep serves Mediterranean tapas made with 100% Thai produce. The duo in charge – Michelin-starred chefs Yoan Martin and Amerigo Tito Sesti – take a rather radical approach to sustainability.
To reduce their carbon footprint, for instance, none of the ingredients they use are imported. They also work exclusively with local distilleries that don’t use foreign ingredients.
Inspired by the sci-fi film Blade Runner, the restaurant has a retro-futuristic, dystopian ambience – think bare cement walls splashed with pink neon lights and video projections.
Adding to the grunge-chic eeriness is a fermentation lab displaying dozens of pickle jars, as well as multi-coloured dining tables made from repurposed plastic.
The fun part is going through the menu, which must be viewed with a slide viewer. Images of steampunk animals give a rough idea of what to expect from the seasonal sharing plates.
“Our concept forced us to readdress our creativity,” explains Italian chef Sesti. “When you lack the main ingredient, you have to find something different and it becomes exciting. Sometimes, we forget to look around us to see there are plenty of things that we can play with or transform into something that didn’t exist before.”
Despite operating without any gas lines and cooking only with wood fire and electricity from their solar panels, the squid roe and mushrooms are grilled to luscious softness.
Bites like prawn skewers with sweet chilli brasucade and fried soft-shell crab aglio olio pack a flavourful punch. A guava sorbet with vanilla wraps up this inventive meal.
Over on the island of Phuket, Jaras, a beachfront restaurant in InterContinental Phuket Resort, serves seafood and southern dishes made from “nature’s menaces” and invasive species.
Set against a wall of dark pine logs, diners are invited to the rear of the restaurant to view a food map showcasing where the finest ingredients were sourced from all over the country.
As the first restaurant in Thailand to be endorsed by WWF, Jaras champions zero-waste cooking and closes the waste loop by bringing their compost to the local farms they source from.
Not that much is left for the trash cans. Even coffee grounds and oyster shells are sent to pottery studios, and aromatic menus are printed on leftover lemongrass bark.
Over a nine-course tasting menu, award-winning chef Chalermwut Srivorakul has injected authentic Thai flavours into plants and animals that disrupt local ecosystems, such as water mimosa, black chin tilapia and golden apple snails. The menu revolves around what produce is available during the season.
Their star main course, khanom chin, a rice noodle with curry, fashions noodles out of the flesh of black chin tilapia – a formidable African fish that has been competing with indigenous species for sustenance.
Last year, the Thai government committed 450 million baht to combat this fish’s environmental impact. “It may seem like you’re just having dinner, but it’s not just a meal,” insists chef Srivorakul.“It helps with climate change and supports the local farmers and fishmongers, whether directly or indirectly. They may be selling humble vegetables, but when they see how their produce turns into fine dining dishes, they are immensely proud and want to elevate their crops. If you want to work in sustainability, do it well. It’s not about being lazy and taking the easy way out.”
