We are outside because McMaster says he’s more comfortable in the fresh air (he tries to have as many meetings as possible outside). Later this month, Silo Hackney will open upstairs in The White Building following owner, Crate, having raised almost £1m in crowdfunding – double the original target – to not only improve its canal-side brewery and pizzeria but also open an entirely new project with the chef. From south coast to the Big SmokeĪlmost exactly five years on from throwing open the doors to Silo Brighton and the 32-year-old chef from Sheffield sits outside Crate Brewery in Hackney in the drizzle on the cusp of opening Silo’s second coming. The pursuit of a zero-waste restaurant proved noble, but also chaotic and brutal. In his book Silo, The Zero Waste Blueprint, there are numerous tales of chaos, of the restaurant nearly burning down, of McMaster sleeping on the restaurant floor and not leaving the premises for weeks on end. It was brave, uncompromising – diners were greeted with a large compost machine as a bold statement of intent – and by his own account incredibly difficult to do, often overwhelmingly so. At Silo in Brighton, which he launched in 2014 and closed in June this year, McMaster has (in)famously strived to create and run a restaurant that tackles head on the thorny issue of the vast amount of waste generated in the world of hospitality. Those who know of McMaster, who is leading a one-man crusade against waste in restaurants, will be familiar with this approach. In Silo’s ‘closed loop’ system there is no such thing as a by-product, just another product. Ingredients are delivered free of disposable packaging food is cooked, served and eaten with any absolutely necessary leftovers turned into either green or brown compost glass wine bottles are reduced to powder and turned into ‘porcelain’. Like its previous incarnation in Brighton, which closed earlier this year after half a decade to make way for the new project, nothing in Silo is thrown away.Īnd McMaster means nothing. This might appear a minor observation, but from this seemingly simple premise has grown the UK’s – if not the world’s – first zero-waste restaurant. There will be no bin in Douglas McMaster’s new restaurant, Silo, when it opens in Hackney in November.
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