How D.C. Restaurants Source Local and Reduce Food Waste

Environmentally minded restaurants often ditch their plastic straws and containers. But how many can turn wine glasses into ceramic creations? At Michelin-starred Oyster Oyster in Washington, D.C., 2022 F&W Best New Chef Rob Rubba’s sustainability efforts stretch the imagination on what’s possible.

Maryland ceramic artist Katie Aldworth transforms crushed glass from the restaurant’s wine bottles into plates, tiles, and other building materials. The Shaw neighborhood restaurant also reserves its cooking oil and mixes it with beeswax from Pennsylvania’s Earth N Eats Farm to make candles that rest on empty shells from the oysters it serves. The menu is printed on paper made from recycled materials and then embedded with wildflower seeds.

“If you don't keep your menu, you can always tear that up and throw it in your yard or a garden, and those seeds will germinate and create pollinators,” says Rubba, also one of the restaurant’s founding partners.

The vegetarian and bivalve menu showcases what’s in season, sourcing from more than 30 farmers, mainly in the mid-Atlantic. “We just have to be very flexible when you're working with a menu that is trying to be sustainable,” Rubba says. “It's like the weather. It can change at any moment.”

The Green Restaurant Association estimates that restaurants accumulate 100,000 pounds of waste annually. At Oyster Oyster, 25% of the leftover food is turned into compost while 75% is used for fermentation, such as for sauce, kombucha, or vinegar. For instance, the restaurant recently started purchasing kumquats from Bhumi Growers in New Jersey and uses the entire citrus fruit for multiple uses — from condiments, to a kumquat kombucha, to a tea made from the seeds and stems. The staff turns surplus bread from the evening service into miso, a process that takes about a year of fermentation to be usable, Rubba says.

Reusing food is also a key aspect of the sustainability program at D.C.’s Buffalo & Bergen, a deli and all-day breakfast joint with three locations in Union Market, Capitol Hill, and Cleveland Park. “I tell anybody that wants to get into sustainability in your restaurant, they have to look at your product and say, ‘how can I use this more than once’ or ‘ how do I make something taste as good by using less?’” says owner Gina Chersevani.

Take a lemon, for instance, which could be used to make lemon zest to cure gravlax, while the juice is strained to make lemonade or lemon juice, then dehydrated and ground lemons mix with Maldon salt to deliver a tangy lemon salt. A friend takes the leftover salmon skins and turns them into animal jerky. And no bagel goes to waste. The staff dries, slices, and bakes leftovers to make bagel chips that are served on the side with matzo ball soup or salad, or on their own.

About 60% of Buffalo & Bergen’s food supply is sourced from farms within a 50-mile radius, including a proprietary farm that Chersevani purchased five years ago. There she grows strawberries, lavender, tomatoes, and most of the restaurants’ herbs, while an orchard will produce apples, peaches, and plums in the future. The farm’s 64 chickens consume the restaurant’s food byproducts, such as cucumber ends and carrot tops, and produce the eggs used at the restaurants. 

Moving toward zero waste is an ongoing process, but the first step is to prioritize it, says Chersevasi. “As the proprietor, you have to care. And when you pick one thing to start with, you'll see how fast and easy it is to go from one thing to 20 things. “Living on a farm has taught me that you don't need to use all the things you use.”

And one of the biggest payoffs, Rubba says, is seeing others follow your lead. “I get so pumped when peers have implemented compost programs, stop buying deli containers, and switch to products with more longevity,” he says.