Restaurant Reformer

Opened in 2007 by Kim and Kari Bartmann, the Red Stag Supper Club is the first restaurant in Minnesota registered under the LEED-CI 2.0 standard.

Located in the Burlington Marriott, chefs Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier present New England cuisine at Summer Winter (opened in 2007). With food sourced locally, and grown in their own greenhouse, they eschew large food suppliers.

Food service doesn’t happen without agriculture, so it’s probably worth investigating the links in the food chain to see if there’s something useful. Fortunately, the US Federal Government appropriated funds to let the National Center for Appropriate Technology continue to operate the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service.

This means you still have an opportunity to ask an expert.

Previous answers discuss turkey, quail, mushrooms, dairy, hogs, persimmon, cherries, sugarcane, cheese making, pomegranate, alligator and much, much more.

If you are trying to source sustainable and/or organic food, the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service has a vast library of material available.

A short (4.5-minute) video featuring Stu Stein of Terroir (Portland, OR) is found at Cooking Up a Story. Stein also has a cookbook (now out of print, but apparently available through Terroir), which also has a website. Stein is also interviewed at Global Chefs.

The list compiled at grist.org in July 2007 includes:

Alice Waters, Chez Panisse, Berkeley, Calif., U.S.
Dan Barber, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, N.Y., U.S.
Alain Passard, L’Arpège, Paris, France
Fergus Henderson, St. John Restaurant, London, U.K.
Chris Cosentino, Incanto, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.
Jamie Oliver, Fifteen, London, U.K.
Andrea Reusing, Lantern, Chapel Hill, N.C., U.S.
Corrado Assenza, Caffé Sicilia, Noto, Sicily, Italy
Tod Murphy, Farmers Diner, Quechee, Vt., U.S.
Ted Walter, Passion Fish, Pacific Grove, Calif., U.S.
Paulo Martins, Lá em Casa, Belém, Brazil
David Kinch, Manresa, Los Gatos, Calif., U.S.
Ferran Adrià, El Bulli, Roses, Spain
Peter Hoffman, Savoy, New York, N.Y., U.S.
Mari Fujii, Kamakura, Japan

Runners-up:
Frank Stitt, Highlands Bar & Grill, Birmingham, Ala., U.S.
Michel Nischan, Dressing Room, Westport, Conn., U.S.
Tory Miller, L’Etoile, Madison, Wis., U.S.
Christine Kim, Green Zebra, Chicago, Ill., U.S.
Michel Bras, Restaurant Bras, Laguiole, France

… and many, many more included in the comments there.

From Planet Green (Discovery Communications), we find Cook with Foods that Fight Cancer: Turmeric And Ginger.

The post at Planet Green is essentially a recipe review from Cooking with Foods That Fight Cancer [and this post is essentially a test for Amazon links]

Restaurant reformer launched in early 2008 to collect information on sustainable business practices relevant to the restaurant industry. Tips and suggestions are always encouraged. Guest bloggers will probably appear from time to time.

This site is about discovering, collecting and discussing approaches to improve the long-term sustainability of a vast industry that includes everything from the corner deli to the cookie-cutter fast-food operation to the finest dining locations in the world. There’s a lot of turf to cover.

The restaurant industry is one of the most heavily-regulated industries around (at least in some countries), and as such, there may be technologies, mechanisms, or ideas that are simply impossible to implement within the regulatory regime, even if their economic merits are obvious. We pass no judgment with regard to the application of anything discussed on this site – we merely hope to illuminate some options. We hope that in time, those that are economically feasible will appear in the real world, and that the regulations will adapt to accommodate new options in time. Do what you can, with what you have…