Eight of the Best Sustainable Bars and Restaurants in London
Our favourite eco-conscious pit-stops in the capital.
01 September, 2021
- Words by
- Fleur Rollet-Manus and Grace Lee
Sticking
Sticking
to your green principles can sometimes be hard when
eating out or bar-hopping in London. Does the chef care about
climate change? Has produce been ethically sourced? Are bartenders
paid a fair wage? Questions over sustainability needn’t put you
off, though. Plastic-free kitchens and zero-waste cocktails are out
there, in bars and restaurants that are minimising waste, nurturing
renewable approaches to cooking and repurposing leftovers. These
are our favourites.
London‘s
most eco-friendly bars and restaurants
bar
Nine Lives
restaurant
Silo
Trailblazer Douglas McMaster opened the world’s first zero-waste
restaurant in Brighton
in 2014, way before eco-consciousness became cool and
“sustainability” a culinary buzzword. Now, the pioneering concept
has decamped to London’s hipper-than-hip Hackney
Wick. All dishes on the daily-changing, six-course tasting menu
are designed with the bin in mind and the entire supply chain –
from farm to fork – produces zero waste. The restaurant mills its
flour (the sourdough here is divine) and churns it butter – smear
it on said loaf dip the bread into the blue-cheese sauce that comes
with cooked-over-coals artichokes. Anything that can’t be eaten is
put into the high-tech composting system. The ethos extends to
Silo’s interiors: crockery is made from recycled glass; plates are
formed from plastic bags and furniture grown from mycelium – a raw
material praised for its renewable properties.
restaurant
The Duke of Cambridge
restaurant
Spring
Spring’s pioneering Scratch Menu pays homage to Skye Gyngell’s
Australian roots – “scratch tea” is an Aussie term used to describe
cooking something out of the leftovers in your fridge. The
pre-theatre menu (available daily between 5.30pm and 6.30pm) makes
the most of waste produce that wouldn’t usually make it onto the
supermarket shelves, let alone onto fine-dining plates. More than
40 per cent of fruit and vegetables are thrown away in the UK
because they’re too ugly, too big or too small – that’s before they
even reach a shop. Getting ahead of the green curve, Spring gives
the wonky veg a well-deserved place on the plate. Expect comforting
classics such as beetroot tops, potato-skin soups and yesterday’s
sourdough with a spoonful of last year’s gooseberry jam. In a bid
to rid plastics from the kitchen pass and become one of London’s
first plastic-free restaurants, the restaurant is experimenting
with biodegradable cling film and single-use plastics are a
no-go.
restaurant
The Spread Eagle
One of East
London‘s oldest boozers became the first fully vegan pub back
in January 2018. Filled with all the trimmings of a gastropub –
think mustard-velvet sofas, fountain-pen-blue panelled walls,
plenty of plants and a dog-friendly dining policy – a kitchen taken
over by Mexican street-food stars Club Mexicana and vegan-friendly
brews that don’t contain any finings (aka fish bladders).
Nevertheless, a place with barefoot hippies drinking
chia-seed-flavoured hops, this is not. Food is served to share;
order the loaded nachos covered in meat-free chorizo, dairy-free
cheese and a salsa with more kick than a tequila slammer. The
beer-battered tofish (a fish finger sandwich sans fish) with crispy
nori and the jackfruit carnitas that tear apart like their pulled
pork equivalent, shouldn’t be missed either. Add the deep-fried
chilli-chocolate ice cream for dessert and even die-hard carnivores
will be crying out “holy mole” by the end of the meal.
restaurant
Ugly Butterfly
A “waste not, want not” ethos can be found at the core of chef
Adam Handling’s ever-growing empire. His first sustainable site,
Bean & Wheat, uses byproducts from its neighbours The Frog, in
Hoxton,
to pickle, preserve and poach produce into salads, sandwiches and
pastries. Now his latest venture sees the scraps from his Sloane
Street restaurant bypassing the bin and becoming standout plates.
Cheese doughnuts get an upgrade with leftovers from last night’s
cheese boards (the cheesier the better in our opinion), yesterday’s
bread is baked with bananas and smothered with chicken butter and
slurp-worthy lobster soups come deliciously thick like a bowl of
refined clam chowder. It’s guilt-free food that’s (gloriously)
filthy. Continuing to champion change, a percentage of the profits
are donated to The Felix Project, a London-based charity that
creates food parcels for vulnerable people and underprivileged
families.
restaurant
Native
Cutting waste but not corners, chef Ivan Tisdall-Downes scours
the
British countryside in search of the finest wild game and
forgotten foraged foods. Formerly occupying an intimate space –
just 25 seats – in Neal’s Yard, the restaurant recently upgraded to
a brand-spanking new Borough site. Bigger doesn’t always mean
better but Native is, well, absolutely beautiful. Distressed wooden
tables, hanging bulbs, white wood-panelled walls and a scattering
of silver birches provide a pretty contrast to the primeval,
game-heavy plates. Momentarily stealing the spotlight from the
tasting menu is a selection of “chef wasting” snacks created from
offcuts from the previous day. Chuck-away canapés include bites
such as Dorset
mackerel with salt-baked beans and tart rhubarb ketchup, pickled
mussels and compost pakoras with chunks of squash to sweeten the
explosive spices. Native’s pigeon kebab is something of a signature
dish; the blushing breast topped with pickled cabbage is miles away
from the tough meat you’re used to scoffing in your Uber home.
restaurant
Cub
A collaboration between cocktail connoisseur Ryan Chetiyawardana
(aka Mr Lyan of
London’s best bar in the world, Dandelyan), green king Douglas
McMaster (driving force behind “binning is sinning” Silo) and Dr
Arielle Johnson (former in-house scientist of
no-chance-you’re-getting-a-reservation Noma), this Hoxton hangout
is a pretty formidable force. Would-be waste items are turned into
a 13-dish tasting menu mixed with (sustainably sourced) booze and
food such as wild garlic and greens plated with kid, sour rhubarb
and beetroot tart and heady concoctions of wild pine and pear. The
retro spaces – furnished with tables made from yoghurt pots and
clay walls that filter the air – give off serious house-party
vibes. Imagine this as your friend’s place, that is if your friend
is a first-class food scientist with a Breaking Bad-style booze
laboratory in the basement – which is, actually, kind of true as Mr
Lyan’s experimental cocktail bar, Super Lyan, is downstairs.