A Guide to Sustainable Restaurants Around The World

A Guide to Sustainable Restaurants Around The World | Chef Sac

Sustainability is one of the most important topics today. And here at Chef Sac, we take this matter seriously. We use high-quality materials that are highly durable, so our products are an excellent investment for professional chefs or for you who like to have the best equipment in your kitchen!

An example of how we value using the best materials for our products is our new product, the Tactical Chef Knife Backpack. The fabric is made of military-grade material and a double-stitched seam. That's why this backpack lasts even in the most extreme environments.

Tactical Chef Knife Bag by Chef Sac

And to show how sustainability is in every detail, below is a list of some of the most sustainable restaurants in the world:

Boragó - Chile

Rodolfo Guzmán's dishes are famous worldwide. The restaurant is set in the foothills of Cerro Manquehue in Santiago.

Boragó's vast menu proves its dedication to sustainability. Thirty minutes from the restaurant, a biodynamic farm produces vegetables, milk, and ducks for the kitchen. Instead of importing coffee, which is not native to Chile, Boragó serves espresso made with the fermented seeds of neighboring Espino trees. While the menu is often vegetable-led, the greens on the plates vary a lot. Chile's 700 types of seaweed, rock plants and fungi appear in the whole menu.

Borago - Sustainable Restaurant by Chilean Chef Rodolfo Guzman

Guzmán makes sure that it is not only his kitchen that is ecologically led. While some unique ingredients may travel the country's length, almost none are delivered in plastic. Also, food waste is cut to the minimum, and a newly installed compost bin recycles nutrients that are used to grow vegetables on the farm.

Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants first recognized Boragó's commitment to sustainability with the inaugural Sustainable Restaurant Award in 2018, and it is not something that Guzmán takes lightly. They never planned to be a sustainable restaurant. It is simply the result of what they are and what they practice every day, and their respect for their land.

Azurmendi - Spain

Azurmendi has three Michelin stars and has won the Sustainable Restaurant award from World's 50 Best Restaurants twice. Based in Biscay - Spain, they use solar panels and a geothermal energy system to maintain the restaurant warm in winter and cold in the summer. None of this is hidden away or kept secret. Guests can tour the surrounding greenhouses and rooftop vegetable gardens. Two menus are offered. One of the menus is called "seasonable experience for the five senses," highlighting the seasonal ingredients.

The Vegetable Garden of Azurmendi

Quince - United States

Quince located in San Francisco has an exclusive relationship with a 25-acre farm located an hour away, one of the region's oldest certified organic farms. Instead of drawing creek water for irrigation, winter storm storage is captured into a pond for summer usage, leaving an optimal habitat for trout and salmon.

They created a non-profit foundation, FEED THE FUTURE, which supports restaurants and farmers by providing direct aid and resources to Bay Area farms and hospitality workers to encourage entrepreneurship and sustainability in our local food supply.

Quince in San Francisco, United States

This non-profit foundation helps workers at risk, facing food insecurity, housing hardship, and medical care. Grants are also available to support the local farm communities by providing direct aid to purchase equipment, upgrade infrastructure, and assist farmers with direct-to-consumer sales.

Also, they partner with Fresh Run Farm grows over 40 varieties of carefully selected heirloom fruits, vegetables, and flowers of exceptional quality exclusively for Chef Michael and Lindsay Tusk's restaurants, Quince, Cotogna, and Verjus. The seasonally-changing menu at Quince stems from this close collaboration and partnership between Peter, Chef Michael Tusk, and the Quince culinary team.

L'Enclume - United Kingdom

At L'Enclume, in Cartmel, they use ingredients from their 12-acre farm, which was designed by chefs for chefs and along with local suppliers for meat and fish. They have continually developed preserving methods over the past decade to extend the time they can rely on their own growth.

L'Enclume's Iconic Farm

Ingredients that change with the seasons inspire their menu development and ensure a genuinely traceable dining experience reflecting a farm-to-table philosophy.

Their menus are inspired by the constant changing of the seasons. Expect the best seasonal and local ingredients, handled with passion and creativity. They grow their vegetables, herbs, fruits, and flowers on their farm take center stage, along with the finest produce from the surrounding countryside.

They only use exceptional, mostly homegrown ingredients harvested in their prime. Therefore, their tasting menus changes as often as the weather in which their ingredients grow

Sustainable Kitchen Rosy - Japan

Kitchen Rosy located in Tokyo has consistently provided a healthy and sustainable diet to their customers by using natural eggs and vegetables from local farmers that don't use pesticides or chemical fertilizers. Instead, they use products free of additives and derived from organic agriculture.

Sustainable Kitchen Rosy in Tokyo, Japan

Sustainable in all its ways, the linen in the restaurant and the staff's uniforms are made of organic cotton. Plastic containers or straws are not allowed. And lastly, they always find ways to reduce garbage and prevent food loss.

Kitchen Rosy offers a wide variety of lifestyle-friendly dishes such as organic food, gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan menus.

Schloss Schaueinstein - Switzerland

Based in the remote Swiss countryside, Schloss Schauenstein won the 2019 Sustainable Restaurant Award from The World's 50 Best Restaurants. Chef Andreas Caminada embraces the local produce to create unique, refined, and luxurious dishes. The waitlist is eight months long, so it's tough to get a table and taste the chef's culinary creations. They have a vast garden and three greenhouses loaded with vegetables, herbs, and fruits. In addition, the chef also works closely with local farmers.

Taking sustainability to another level, Chef Caminada has built a small coffee roastery next to the restaurant. They also bake their own organic bread in a wood-fired bakery. In terms of energy supply, the restaurant uses 100% renewable energy, using hydropower and hydroelectricity to power all restaurant and hotel rooms. In addition, they ensure that the local produce is delivered in reusable packaging (baskets and glass). All remaining packaging is collected by a local company that transforms it into renewable energy.

Schloss Schaueinstein in Switzerland

In 2015, they founded Fundaziun Uccelin, seeking young, talented hospitality professionals. The foundation brings a unique opportunity for the next generation to gain insights into global culinary diversity with its global network.

The World's 50 Best Restaurants organization says Schloss Schauenstein is "the perfect example of a progressive kitchen of the future”. In an isolated location, they built a restaurant with such sustainability credentials.

River Café - Canada

Based in Calgary, Canada, the River Cafe owned by Sal Howel wanted to create a restaurant with less environmental footprint as possible. Sal Howell implemented waste-reduction programs, limited water use, composting, and urban agriculture, and switched to using only green energy—wind-generated electricity and a form of natural gas produced by decaying organic matter in landfills.

River Cafe in Canada

Her efforts have led to River Café earning certification from the Leaders in Environmentally Accountable Foodservice (LEAF) organization.

She also decided to close off the restaurant to non-Canadian ingredients and always focus on those only available in Alberta and B.C. So outside of allowing chocolate, coffee, and a handful of other items, Howell has pushed the team to look to what they have locally instead of what's available through food-supply companies.

Also, there are no lemons in the River Café's kitchen, so local sumac's surrogate tang has replaced citrus. Salt comes from Vancouver Island, and after discovering a grower in B.C.'s Lower Mainland, they once again were able to have rice on the menu. Essential ingredients such as pepper, soy sauce, and olive oil have also been replaced by locally sourced options, many emerging from chef's experiments, such as vinegar created from beer-tap runoff.

The restaurants listed here show actions that everyone in the food industry can take to make a restaurant more sustainable, from using materials that reduce waste to actions that help the surrounding community.

For sustainability, Chef Sac uses vegan materials and offers a one-year warranty on our chef knife bags. So go to “Shop” and check out our products!

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