Latest / New Worlder / Episode #128: Lara Espirito Santo and George McLeod

Transcript

Episode #128: Lara Espirito Santo and George McLeod · New Worlder

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, it's Nicholas Gill, and this is the New Worlder podcast.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Co-host Juliana Duque will be joining shortly.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Lara Espirito Santo and George McLeod are our guests today.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Lara is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and George is from New Zealand.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Through their shared interest in reducing food waste and imagining
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: a better food system,
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: they met in the UK and started working at Douglas McMaster's zero-waste restaurant,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Silo.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: After a few years there,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: where George was briefly the head chef until the pandemic hit,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: they decamped to Portugal, opening a restaurant there called Sem.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Everything they learned at Silo, they used to create Sem.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: What they were able to do there in five years should give everyone hope.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: By focusing on how they source ingredients and using every part of them,
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: they were able to reduce their food costs dramatically.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Through working directly with regenerative farmers using invasive river fish
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: and wild foods and eliminating plastic,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: they have shown that better models for restaurants exist and
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: that they can also be efficient and effective.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: We just need a little bit of creativity and a shift in mindset.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: They closed some in April.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: In preparation of having a second child and wanting to find
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: a longer term space closer to nature.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: We talk a bit about what they are planning for the future and we should all pay attention.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: They are the kind of people that lead by example and they really see the forest for the trees.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of the forest, my forthcoming book, Eating the Amazon, is available for pre-order.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: It comes out in April.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: You can find it on Amazon and Bookshop.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: As you are going to hear me say this again and again over the next few months,
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: pre-order sales are really important for a book like mine,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: for a book called Eating the Amazon, Get Red.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's an important book that says a lot.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of what you hear us talking about with Laura
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: and George parallels what is being talked about in Eating the Amazon.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So please, pre-orders.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Also, if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter,
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: search for New Worlder on Substack or just go to newworlder.com.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if you like this episode, like us, share us.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's all connected.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Lastly, enjoy the show.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of people say that our food system is broken.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I have heard you guys repeatedly say that no, it isn't.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's working exactly like it's supposed to be.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Supposed to.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by that?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's very, you know, it's like this narrative to say that the food system is broken.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it would be fair to say that if we,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: the intent of the food system to just feed people equitably and healthy,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: you know, in a healthy manner.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't think that that's its intention.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when we have the...
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: Conglomerates of companies that actually drive everything and all of these decisions
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: in the food system,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: it actually is doing pretty well in terms of its intention being to make profit.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's empowering to think about it like that because We are trying
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: to fix something that is inherently not broken.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: It feels like a waste of effort.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, the answers are already there.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: We did have a perfectly functioning food system that fed people and that was...
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: We understood what food came from.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: We understood food,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: what it was,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: in terms of nutrition and actual impact that it had on the land and on people.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: And suddenly we've substituted that with something that's processed and far-reaching
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: and self-serving in a way that is not serving people or the environment.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: So this kind of narrative of, it's actually not broken, but...
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: We should be working on an alternative resilient system feels a little bit more
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: the power in our hands, if that makes sense.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you guys.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I say this all the time here that I think the solutions exist for creating
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: a more sustainable, healthier, fairer food system.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: But what's preventing everyone from implementing these things?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: There's lots to unpack here.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: When we talk about understanding that every time that we eat,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: we make a choice and that choice has a consequence in how the world is used.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: Where our money goes impacts what's planted in what way and that has an impact in itself.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that there's a lot that stops us actually understanding that power
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: and understanding the consequences of our actions.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: The convenience side of the food system as an industrialized food system,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: it's so easy to just go to a supermarket and buy cheap food.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: And the consequences of that cheap food are enormous and we have very little
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Vision of that impact, right?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's so transactional now.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: We go into a supermarket, we buy what we want.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: We have no idea what was lost in this time,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: what was rejected in terms of waste,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: what was byproduct from processing, where it came from, what kind of inputs it had.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's just a very simple transaction.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that connection...
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_03: That we had to food and seasonality and what that meant for our health and for
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: the health of the landscape that we exist in.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's really hard to, it's a connection that we've lost.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to see.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's hard to feel, right?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think that when we look at food waste,
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: for example,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: it's something that is, as soon as we throw something away, it disappears.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: It ceases to exist.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: The idea of away as well,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: just saying that sentence,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: we've thrown something away, it's no longer valid because it's not in our reality.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: And the consequences of food waste are enormous,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: especially when you look at it through a lens of Not only the food itself and
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: the organic matter and how it's treated and the consequence that has,
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: but all of the inputs that we've had to produce food that will never be used.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think that the system as it is now,
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_03: the food system as it exists, it is preventing us from feeling this reality.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So what power does the hospitality industry have in changing this?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: It has immense power.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: We sit kind of in the middle.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: More often than not, we can or do deal directly with the farmers.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: And we can kind of have, we have purchasing power so we can spend our money in the right places.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: We could if we wanted to spend all of our money on regenerative farms or organic
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: and buying local and not buying plastic packaging and things.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: You have this power to make this decision.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then also if you like to, you have an audience every day.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of people don't want to lecture when they're having dinner,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: but you have the opportunity to sort of low-key inform people and like,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Even just through flavor,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: like organic food tastes better than food flown from halfway around the world.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: Nutrient density is much higher, so you have more flavors and food.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so you do have an audience which you can sort of,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: if you'd like to,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: captivate with your delicious food or with a story along the way,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: which is debatable.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I think you, like, I was talking at the...
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: The Common Institute of America in Napa Valley last year.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just chatting to one of the executive chefs from one university from LA.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: And his food budget was $21 million a year for one campus.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was 10 campuses in the university.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: It was one campus, $21 million.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: And he was allowed to spend 11% of that on organic food.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like 21 million dollars, like that's a huge amount.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: You can do a lot of good work with that stuff.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's going to take time to implement this for it to be 100% for sure.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: But like huge amounts of money going into the right places can be very, very powerful.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and the idea that we work around is,
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Sam was, we treated a little bit as a case study, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: We were like, okay,
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: can a restaurant be,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: This radical in terms of its sourcing and what it does with waste.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: Can we go to these extremes of single use plastic, not having any single use plastic?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: And we did, we did,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: and we went quite radical with the intent of being like,
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: how do we create a working model?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: Where hospitality actors can come in and be like,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: okay, I'd like to reduce single-use plastic packaging.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: And we have this working model of how we did it and what went wrong and what went right.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: And the same with sourcing and with waste and with...
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: What we kind of ended up doing a little bit after the first couple of years,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: which was going really deep into understanding our landscape.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: We call it landscape cooking because it became really a reaction to the environment
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: that we existed in.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: We were understanding climatic consequences and invasive species and overproduction
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: and scarcity and wild food and all of these different Things that happened around us
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: and we were trying to cook reactively to that.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I think when you do that, you very naturally create a narrative.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Through this working model.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: And this was the same, did do this as a narrative.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_03: But you don't have to, you know, you don't have to.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: Your concept doesn't need to be that for your influence as a hospitality actor to be felt.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's just understanding that decisions have consequences.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it's as simple as that.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: What do you say to Chefs and restaurant owners who say, yes,
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: we agree,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: we want to waste less, we want to work the landscape, but we're struggling.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Food, energy, labor costs are higher than they used to be, and they're barely making it work.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a one small restaurant.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: They have little economic flexibility to make changes.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: How can they break out of this loop?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think that, like, just to start to say the situation is hard and we appreciate it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like, we know how hard the industry all over the world is having it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: And to work like this is not necessarily easy to start with.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: It is a system that you have to set up.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: But it is actually so much to the advantage when it comes to costing.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think you can talk about creativity.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think there's,
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: like, You're talking to these guys and it's all about the bottom line, right?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: They're just surviving month by month and they might be weeks behind on paychecks
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: and paying bills and stuff like this is reality.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's hard.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you can really only convince them by talking about the bottom line.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: And we had exceptional food costs.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like in the last three years,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: our food cost was 17%, which is significantly below industry standards.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Industry standards, what, like 30-something?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: They teach you 30 at school.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Between 20, yeah.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: If you've still got 30 these days, you're really shuffling out.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like 25 years, below 25 years.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then we just did that by just being creative with things that have no value.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: So you're taking a,
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: like corn, for example, you're buying whole corn completely, still got the husk on.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: You're only going to use one product from there.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know which one.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: You just use the kernel.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then you've got three other products which you're not using.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: So like the husk, the fibers, and the coal.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: If you can turn those things into value,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: into two, three,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: four other products,
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: whether it be a vinegar or a nice little powder or something with infusion for
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: the bar or something, you've...
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: You've increased the value of something that you would normally throw away.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: So then you don't have to buy something in to replace it.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you start with this little cycle and you find yourself just like,
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Not spending money because you're buying whole ingredients from good places
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: and you trust your farmers and you trust your supply chain and you just create
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: so much interesting and unique flavors.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then we kind of,
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: we definitely went super extreme,
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: which I think was necessary and I loved it for sure.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: We found ourselves in this new sort of realm of food, which was like, It was just crazy.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: It was just bonkers.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like the flavors that we were putting together and the stuff that was coming out on
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: the plate was just like super unique, super fun.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why people came to us in the end,
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: just because they were going to get something, you know, trustworthy.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was good quality and they eventually knew that everything was From
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: the best suppliers and organic and everything and trusted us
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: to do some delicious things.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: But it put us aside into a different category of not just another restaurant,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: you know, not another neighborhood restaurant doing
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: the same as the guy next to him.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: And if you change your USP slightly to this,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: sort of like,
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: if people will see you caring,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: caring about your food,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: caring about the environment, it's much more attractive than not, you know.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: But just to address this issue of incentives and the way you see creativity,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: there seems to be different incentives, right?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like the low cost, it's obviously, you know, the economic one.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then the theoretical care about the environment.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me that all these wouldn't be
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: More solid for, you know, not for you guys, but for people in general.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: If we don't change the order of what has to respond to what, right?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: This creativity at the service of nature and the natural cycles, right?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of the other way around.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: This comes from an anthropocentric view of the world,
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: which is, you know, we have, we, or some of us are trying to get rid of it.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me that no matter how much people see the importance
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: of being more caring and conscious about this,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: if we don't change the mindset, it's
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: not long-term effective, right?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you have insisted on this,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: like why creativity should respond to nature instead of the other way around.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's something I will like you to explain to people in this podcast
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: because I know that's one of your main messages and why you use
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: the term regenerative and not sustainable.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can expand on that.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking why,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: The Nordic countries of Europe,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: even when they realize,
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: still realize how much in fossil fuels,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: there seems to be a mindset that allowed them to use creativity,
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: thinking what our context is and what is our role as part of the planet, right?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of how do we use things for us?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: The mindset and you guys explicitly address a mindset in how you explain
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: the restaurant is key,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: no matter how much the economic incentives or government policies are, right?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think this is how we set out to work.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: We created a working model,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: an operating model within SEM,
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: which was based on a tasting menu,
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: which allowed us the flexibility to change And then this was down to
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: the two main objectives that we did there,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: which was to not have any waste because we understand this is to be huge,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: huge importance when you look at it in a macro lens,
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: but also to support regenerative farming.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: And the zero waste part is like George was explaining.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's basically a very short supply chain.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: We're not cooking with leftovers.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: This is not cooking with sub-quality food.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: It is literally working with the best food, but at a very close level with your suppliers.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Which means that we had whole ingredients and we didn't discard anything.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: So any kind of leaf, peels, stems, seeds,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: all of this was treated as an ingredient,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: as a product, rather than something that is easier just to throw in the bin.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: This kind of meant that,
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_03: and this is when we talk about the role of hospitality as well,
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: In culture, right,
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: in this incentive where we did end up having this very unique cuisine
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: and people did come to us for the creative, conscious, creative cuisine.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: But there's also this part which we as an industry need to kind of come to terms
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: with, which is we are going to have to disappoint the customer, right?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: So working like this means that some days you won't have The fish
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_03: because you're not talking to a distributor who can bring in another fish from
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: a distribution center and fix the hole that was created.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: When you're dealing with the fisherman himself and he suddenly had a loss
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: in his family so he's not working today.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: And then you don't have fish.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then that's when it becomes heavier on the system where, okay,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: we're going to use our creativity and all of this kind of library of flavor
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: that we've been creating over the past months by creating Adding value to things
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: that usually get thrown away.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: And we're going to put together another dish.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: And we're going to trust not in the consistency of supply,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: but on the consistency of the quality that we're offering.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: And there is this culture of like, oh, but you don't have what I want.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: This is what I came here for.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I think this is where...
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: We as hospitality have to reinvent ourselves a little bit because the way
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: that things are going and with the climatic conditions that we have this year,
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: for example,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: there are going to be breaks in the supply chain no matter how long Obviously,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: you will,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: at the moment where we are now,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: we can still,
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: you know, okay,
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: you don't have the tarmacets from Portugal because,
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: you know, we don't have them anymore.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm going to bring them in from Spain and they'll be fine.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_03: In a normal long chain scenario,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: but very soon that's not going to be the case,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: because we're going to have such adverse climatic conditions
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: that these really consistent supply chains are going to break.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: So we are going to have to adapt ourselves and redefine these incentives
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: and these operating models that have been established for so long,
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: working on convenience.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: Thankfully,
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: like you said,
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_03: understanding that cooking is a reaction to where you are and making the most
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_03: of your landscape and supporting the right mode of production could be
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: a really good lever to this new operating model.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: At the moment we're in the middle of writing a talk for
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: A conference that we're doing in Copenhagen in a couple of weeks time.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's about foodways.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: The whole conference is about conscious cuisine and some upcycling of food.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: And there's some great guys coming together and speaking.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: And we're doing a lunch and doing a talk at the same time.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we're talking about the history of zero waste and if it's tradition
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: or like modern techniques.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the reality is like, it's old school.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's as old school as it gets is these like, oh,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: there's so,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: I was diving into the research yesterday and it's just like,
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: it's unbelievable what we eat every day that generally came from scarcity or
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: from these like,
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: The thought process of like, of course, I'm not going to throw it away.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to reuse it in some way.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: There's like an endless list of stuff that we commonly consume that is essentially zero waste.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the biggest thing we've kind of lost in
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: the mindset part is it's just like we've lost the understanding
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: about immediate ecosystems.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: like we know so much about the world and all over the place and like Nick,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: you're an expert in the Amazon and South America and We,
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: the majority of people don't really know if there are any farms in the local area.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's certainly access to these farms.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: You can't find them in the shops or, you know, they don't know.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Their neighbour's uncle has got six goats and he makes milk.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: So we've kind of lost this sort of, like,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: connection to where we are,
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: just purely from the supermarkets,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: making it easy, like pre-cut, washed salad in a bag, boom, perfect, you know.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think the mindset was there for sure.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: We've just kind of fallen away from it.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: And there are some amazing sort of things happening around the world where
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: the connection is coming back to that,
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: sort of building these communities, whether it's in a city or into the countryside.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just going back to what we've done before.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's nothing new.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's like reinventing it with modern technology and all this new information that we have.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: I would think food waste is a fairly modern invention.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's probably just the last few hundred years that we've been wasting things.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like the whole history of humankind before that was the opposite.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you grew your own food and you had your own pigs and you looked after your pig
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: for two years, you wouldn't throw anything away.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: You sacrifice your pig and you bring the village around and you make sausages
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: and you do the offal and everything will get used.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's nonsensical,
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: but it's interesting because we,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: it's not,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: this idea of understanding what's in excess or what's in scarcity around you
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: and reacting to that.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: And what I think happened with industrialization of foods,
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: this huge impact that we had in our food system by industrializing it,
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: is that we made wasting food very cheap, which it wasn't for.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not necessarily that industrialization gave us abundance, it did,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: but it also made Throwing things away,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: getting milk and turning it into butter and completely discarding the,
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: the byproducts of making butter,
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: which are more than the butter itself, just make it cheap.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: So it's easier to do it,
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: and we're losing so much value in terms of culinary knowledge and traditions and,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: we have 120 things that we produce at scale and,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: About 7,000 edible species that we know of,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: you know, and we're losing all of that knowledge.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: There seems to be an upside down understanding of abundance too in that way,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that industrialization has set us up for expectations, which is abundance.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like meeting all what I want,
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: which to start with, who defines what I want is the system in itself, right?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Which is the trap.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas abundance should be how do we make the most of what is available at the time
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: and how tuned we are with what is available and how we know it's available, right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's so like a common sense thing, but for some reason it's completely twisted.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so obviously the expectations are based on that twist
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't know what it'll take for people
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: because I don't think it's economic suffering.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's part of it.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's a motivation for people.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you see the economic struggle, then people might mobilize.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: But there has to be a realization that I will say is existential, spiritual.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: as you guys have experienced yourselves,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: That will make this easier for everyone
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: to just not expect what shouldn't be expected.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like to start with restaurants, shouldn't be meeting what people want.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just make the best of what is available.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that should be enough,
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: because it's based on trust,
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: it's based on ethics, it's based on the quality of your work.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then you pay something that you trust is a fair price because it's based on all that, right?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: It makes things so much.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So abundance is also something that it has been twisted, the understanding of it, I think.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's really interesting when we understand also the very simplicity of this.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: I've been going very deep into this research of understanding food waste from
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: a historical perspective and in the 17th century England,
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: even in households that were Not in situations of poverty,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: so households that had money.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: It was good economics to be thrifty.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: It was a word that was used and it was what the experiment The difference
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: that happened in the house was how do we understand to crystallize this fruit
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_03: or preserve this meat and all of these very traditional food recipes that come
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: from this idea of being thrifty.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: But the word that derives from that is thriving.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: so the idea of thriving actually comes from,
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: you know, how can we be efficient and ingenious about this?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: how can we use flavor and creativity to actually make the most
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: of what we have here right now?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: And that should be enough, right?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not abundance in terms of quantity.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's, you know, it's you're thriving because you're actually doing amazingly with just enough.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it's really interesting.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: So right now you guys are doing a project where you're collecting food wastes,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: like traditional food wastes.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is actually this symposium because the Upcycling Symposium is the second year
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: that it's happening in Copenhagen.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's hosted by the cooking school in Copenhagen, which has amazing, amazing people reading.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: This initiative there.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: It started with other restaurants that have similar working models to what Sam did.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Nola in Helsinki and Essie in Copenhagen, which is Matt Orlando's restaurant.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then other guys in Denmark as well.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: Silo and Domestic in Copenhagen.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: This year it's expanded and it's got more people coming.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Chantal Mickelson, Rob Rubber from Oyster Oyster and Will Goldfarb.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: And we're all going again,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: the original five restaurants still going again,
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: but also working a little bit differently.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: And we know these guys are doing just like Sam was,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_03: quite innovative cuisine,
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: in terms of what's literally going on the plate,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: different kinds of applications,
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: fermentation techniques and preservation techniques to create flavor
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: By not having any waste.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: And we were like, okay, we're doing the lunch, we're cooking.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: So we're talking to students and people in the industry.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it's okay to assume that quite a fair few of young chefs going into
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: the industry are going to be quite attracted by these new applications
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_03: of old techniques.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: Let's call it like that.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of very creative cuisine.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: But it's also fair to assume that some of them might just want to go
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: and work very classically,
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: you know, and understand, you know, very, very classical traditional French cuisine.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: And we wanted to show that this mentality
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: of cooking is essentially what Gastronomy is essentially what it's based around.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: And this is why we're diving into these very traditional recipes
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: and finding incredible ways
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: that traditional cooking has made around preserving food.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's taken us in recipes and techniques all around the world from fish sauces
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: and fermentations to Using even Brazil and Latin America as examples of kind
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: of turning inedible foods to edible through preserving processes and fermentation
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: and suddenly a food that becomes a staple and you use it in
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: a hundred different ways, you know, talking about cassava.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: This is the idea.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: This started because of the symposium,
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: but we are building a larger research around this just because I think it's
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: a very valuable way to look at zero waste without being trendy,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: without falling into a world where it doesn't need to be this kind of new age.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like zero waste...
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Often is just this hashtag or something,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: and it really becomes meaningless when it gets reduced to that,
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: but it's something practical.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's another approach to tradition that I think should be revisited,
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: which is there is this idealization of the past,
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: but Maybe the value of it is since they have less,
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: there was so much scarcity because of the wars and just less resources,
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: less flow of goods,
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: they were actually getting probably,
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know, like more correct way than we are just because they had to, right?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the methods and the ways of cooking It's based on the mindset of scarcity
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: and less resources and less possibilities.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes it better somehow.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we tend to think that this abstract idealization of traditional cooking
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: and how beautiful it was.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was probably really harsh and awful sometimes,
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: but probably more tuned to what it had to,
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: which is let's make the best of What it's just,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know, sometimes probably not enough even, but.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Portugal is a very good example for that.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: I think the amount of dishes made from old bread are like,
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: you can write a book on old bread dishes, you know, and the best sausages.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: That could be a great cookbook.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm into it.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: But the best sausage is like old bread soaked in pork fat with confit garlic and smoked.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it's all that in a sausage.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it's amazing.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Super good.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: And like, yeah, it's exactly that.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's just being creative with what you've got.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you don't have anything else and you do what you can.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think like, I mean, it depends on who you ask about like,
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to be hard the next couple of years.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: We need to know how to do this again.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's potentially not going to be abundant in terms of quantity for everybody.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: And consistency, same thing no matter where you are or how
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: you're working.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: So these sort of forgotten knowledge, not lost, but forgotten knowledge is making a comeback.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's more important to start firing that back up again in a serious way now.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: Before it's too late, I guess.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bit grim, actually, but you know what I mean?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it's the idea of creative limitation, right?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_03: When you set these boundaries and this is, you know, when...
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: Now is optional in the sense that we're trying to not throw anything away
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_03: and we start creating something new.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: But that's how these old traditional recipes were created in the past.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: We had this dead limitation of like, I can't throw this away.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you use your brain power in incredible ways because it's uncharted paths.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I think, like,
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_03: the work that you're doing, Nick,
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_03: is incredible with that of preserving this knowledge that it's actually the people
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_03: behind these foods which we need to protect,
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: and it's the same, like,
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you guys know the work of Dan Saladino,
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: he wrote that book,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: Eating to Extinction, like,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's incredible and I think this is a little bit also what is kind of bringing
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: to light that it's actually the people behind these foods that are disappearing
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_03: and these techniques that are disappearing that need to be protected and preserved
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: because the knowledge that they have is not filtering down
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: through industrial processes.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's within those that we might find an answer to the economic side and the nutrition side.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: We have loads of examples here in Portugal as well.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_03: They're called Iberian cloudberries, super small white berries.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: Have insane levels of antioxidants.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Insane.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: And they're a shrub that grows only in the coastal region of the Iberian Peninsula,
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_03: not anywhere else in the world.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: And they're ecosystem recovery plants.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: So they're the first bush that comes back up after a fire.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: And then the birds feed on the berries and seeds and then that landscape starts
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: to restore itself.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: They disappear by the Millions the minute that anything gets built on the coast
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: in Portugal, which is every other day.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: And we have a handful of people that still recognize them, you know, and see them for...
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: There's one study done by a university here of their kind of nutritional value, but...
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: If we as chefs,
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_03: as actors in this system are not giving prominence to the recipes and the way
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: that this was used and how delicious they can be,
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: the applications that it can have and experimenting with this and playing with this
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: in terms of trying to bring it protagonism, what incentive do we have to protect it?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then the people that know this as well
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do they taste good?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: They're super good.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think the reason they haven't been commercialized is because they have quite
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: a tough stone in the middle.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's not huge, but you can put it in the blender and it doesn't break.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not as easy as a blender.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they could breathe
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: it out of it, I'm sure.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: And then we don't reproduce them.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they go pink when they oxidize, which is super fun.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that comes back to the story of the power of hospitality and the power
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: of restaurants.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: Look what it did for truffle and caviar and foie gras
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: and these worldwide recognized ingredients which were made famous by restaurants
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: and these luxury things which we You can't buy in the supermarkets.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: If you go to an expensive deli, you can find a little tin in front of you.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: There's a huge category of foods which are made famous by restaurants.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: Regional foods, which have now been globalised, and you can find them all across the world.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I think there's a really cool thing happening in the industry of the
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: In my opinion, the luxury is changing, in a way.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: The idea of luxury.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: Virgilio is the greatest example of this.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: What he's doing is it's luxury because you can only have it here and now, and that's it.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's luxury.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: You go into the mountains in India to Noor, and it's the same thing.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: You go and find all these countryside places and deep mountains or in the valleys or
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: in the desert or whatever,
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: and These experiences,
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: which you can only find here and now, that's real luxury, in my opinion.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: This is my kind of luxury.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we can do that with the zero-waste sort of mindset as well.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's kind of what we want to do, I think.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_02: This idea of time and place luxury.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's it.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sam closed, but not because of profit, right?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was just...
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: A life step.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_03: It was lots of different reasons that came together at the same time, including the baby.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: We always had a time limit on that physical location because
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: It was very small and we did want to prove that it could be done in
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: a small urban scenario,
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_03: which tends to be a lot of the time like, oh,
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: I can't do what you guys do because I don't have space or,
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_03: you know, I'm not near farms and...
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: This whole idea, like I said, it was this little case study of like, okay, can we do this?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: Can we take it to this extreme?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: So then it can be taken apart and used by other people.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: So it always had this kind of time limit.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: But there was also this sensation of,
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: we had two hours to provide a guest experience where we could
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't go through everything that we were going through
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: without being condescending or overbearing, which was a real challenge, right?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: So every time that someone sat down and was like, but why, what is a Xander?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: I never heard of this fish before.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh, it's because we don't use fish from the sea.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: We use invasive river species and because of this and that.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it did end up for the guest that was interested,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: it didn't end up being kind of a long conversation around these issues.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: We don't know how we felt about that.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: there is this feeling that like,
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: can dinner just be dinner, but do all of these things as well?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, this is a challenge that we, you know, it's like, how do we do that?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: How do we make it more...
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: Immersive.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: How can sustainability not be for show?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_03: And we've been working on the next project.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: We've been working on the business plan since, so we've had the baby, but we haven't been off.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: We haven't been working.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: And the next project is this exploration of how can impact
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: The impact of hospitality be deeper, but also less
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_03: overtly exposed.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: I get overwhelmed sometimes in tasting menus where it's just so much information sometimes.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it's just unnecessary fucking shit details that nobody needs to know ever.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just like,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's just been ingrained in so many people now that they have to tell a story
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: with every dish and tell everything about it.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: Even when it does mean something, it can be too much.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's just having the structure in place that the details just reveal themselves.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_03: We did experiment with a few things, yeah.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: We had like an impact key.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: So George has a brilliant idea,
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: when you go to a restaurant and you kind of have the little numbers on the side.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like the jumbo menu, like laminated jumbo menu.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it has like the allergens on like, you
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: know, like clues, crustaceans or whatever.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: So we had this impact key,
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: which was Trying to map within the written menu where the impact was.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that was like, okay, so this is an upcycled product that was done from excess.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: So that was the bread miso butter.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: Excess bread, we turned it into bread miso and it went into the butter.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: The keys are like heritage, upcycled byproducts.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, invasive species, wild, endemic as well.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: We had a lot of,
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: trying to put a lot of focus on things that were here from this region and for
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: a reason, you know, so the kind of The local species over the industrialized ones.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: We also had a key for more innovative products that we were using,
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: which were more forward thinking.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: Future food systems.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, when we were thinking,
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: what is an ingredient that is a bigger part of a future food system?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: Algae, different kinds of algaes, or we were working with a...
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: Cacao-free chocolate using byproduct from the beer industry,
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: you know, so it's bad brewing grains.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: But just that, like,
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: the act of putting this information onto the menu gave us,
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: like, total freedom to let the people decide if they wanted to know more.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: because, like,
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: the curious ones would ask what it means instantly and you know that you're on.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this people wants to know, this is why they're here, great.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Someone, like, doesn't even give you a sniff, perfect, you're just having a drink, you know.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: And like it was, it was game changing.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: Delicate little thing of like, okay, now you decide.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: And then you get the information that you want from here or from us.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: You decide how much you want.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: But I think there's,
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: and then this kind of,
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: like, pushes, like, how, what are the other ways we can do this?
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: how can we make it more,
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_03: how can we explore this idea of time and place and landscape and understanding
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: the system around us and how to react to it through hospitality,
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: you know, and how to make, you know, sustainability not have to announce itself.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's, I think,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: the restaurant sort of just, like,
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: It just came to its natural ending,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: sort of to the point where we were very happy with what we were doing and what
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: the offering was and we did a lot of fine tuning on the service and of course
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: the food.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: But at the end of the day,
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: we were just a small restaurant in the neighborhood,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: and like we,
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: it wasn't enough,
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: it wasn't scratching its itch and I was really traveling to work
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: and classic restaurant owners just like overworking and I didn't see a tree
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: on my way to work.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'd see a couple of shrubs and I'd recognize the elderflower on the other side
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: the building.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: But that was that.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, man, I can't do this.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like I need to be, I need to go to nature.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is not where I want to be.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so kind of a few things sort of happened at the same time.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now it's like, okay, let's do this again.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: Let's be bigger.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: Let's have,
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: bring in more experts from different fields where we can have more impact,
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: positive impact.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_02: With kind of keeping the core of the idea,
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: so working very closely with material designers and landscapers
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: and like different architects and stuff to sort of build,
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: think about what we want to do and bringing in,
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: having this board of advisors from just our network to kind
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: of like help us do something that could potentially be really Powerful,
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: subtly powerful, let's say.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: And hopefully that's going to look like a boutique hotel.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: Lara doesn't like the word boutique, but it kind of sums it up quite well.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: I work on a farm with a big rewilding project.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: And a restaurant out.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: And a restaurant
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: as well.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: This will be in Portugal or do you even know yet?
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: No, it won't be.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: Realistically, it probably won't be in Portugal.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: We have a few places in mind,
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_03: and we are looking for the appropriate land in these few places,
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: but we haven't found a specific location yet.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're relatively early days.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: We're building a business plan now, but without a space, without a location.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: So it really gets you hungry so much, you know?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: But we're hardcore dreaming, like, right.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: What is the craziest thing that we can do?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, let's go for that.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's exciting.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Are you still
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: in Portugal now?
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: We will probably stay here until next summer, European summer.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: We will
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: hopefully have
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: Our shortlist down to one by the end of the year.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: So we make a decision of where we're going.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: So that we can start actually putting feet on the ground on this.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_03: We have amazing people wanting to work with us.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_03: When you start expanding this thinking of like,
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_03: okay, what kind of impact does this product have in terms of food product, right?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: And who produced it in what way?
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_03: And how does it fit into the system?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: When you apply that to the world of materials,
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing,
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: amazing what can be done with materials and what does it mean
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: to have hospitality grown from a place rather than imposed on a destination.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: So we're exploring all of that now and it's hopefully going to be an immersive food
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: and nature driven experience.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: How did you guys get into this thing about sustainability?
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: George, you're from New Zealand.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Lara, you're from Brazil.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Lara, didn't your dad Like work on industrial farms?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: We actually came up to the same kind of conclusion, but through very different ways.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: And my experience was completely different from George's,
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_03: but I grew up, my father worked in large scale industrial farms in South America.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: He was a farm manager and we used to be with him a lot of the time.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then as we got older,
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: we moved to Rio, which is where I'm from and where I was born to go to school.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: We were in these farms where we're
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_03: super deep into the countryside of Brazil.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_03: One of the farms that I spent most of my time in was in Tocantins,
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_03: which is between the Amazon and the Pantanal, actually, so the two biomes.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: It was amazing.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was for a child.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was like living in a safari.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_03: It was an irrigated rice farm.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_03: So imagine there was every bird and every animal and canals in the air.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_03: And to see alligators was boring.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_03: We wanted to see the giant snakes and the anteaters.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: It was next level.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: But within my teenage years,
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_03: so the last time I went, I was 15 and there wasn't a single bird left.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_03: So within the lifespan of a child in my memory,
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: the biodiversity completely disappeared from an industrial farm.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: What's there now?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is it still a farm?
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: I imagine it got sold years ago.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you guys should open the restaurant.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, my God.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's really cool.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: That would be really cool.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I think I went, I then went into, you know, I never wanted to be a farmer.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: I told my dad, I was like, this is the last thing I want to do because this is terrible.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: But then went into political sciences and international development,
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_03: worked in kind of large scale projects on the environmental and social impact side,
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_03: worked for the government in Rio for a while as well during the 2008
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: Late 2010 is when the classification of the favelas was happening and I was working
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_03: on the social impact side of that and I had a massive kind of,
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not happy I'm going to go to what I love which is cooking and
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_03: then realized just how central food was to everything that I had done so far
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_03: and how it actually is connected to all of it.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: We eat three times a day and so many of the decisions that happen to us are done
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_03: because of this food system.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: So that's how I came into it and then kind of went into work with it and
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: then met Doug from Silo and had a conference called Food on the Edge,
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_03: which we're going to on Sunday.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: And asked them for a job.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: And that's kind of how I got into the restaurant zero waste world.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: But I had already met George by then, but his going into...
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_03: Mine was kind of this very academic and life experience kind of roll
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: into sustainability and then kind of dropped into food.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas you were...
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, mine was a lot more menu waiver driven.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: Started quite late,
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: I was like 23 and from high school to 23 I was really lost,
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: I travelled a lot and was doing odd jobs and sort of just like some skills now
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_02: that are actually like very beneficial when you're in a small restaurant
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: and like learning,
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: like just learning how to use tools and a bit of building and plumbing
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: and electricity and stuff.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_02: So when I started cooking,
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was maybe about five years in and I was working at
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: a fine dining seafood restaurant in New Zealand.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_02: Very good place, very nice.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I was super frustrated.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was extremely, extremely frustrated.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: I was quite angry and I couldn't really figure out why
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: because technically I was working in the best restaurant in the city.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm supposed to be doing this stuff, right?
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm supposed to be in this direction of working hard and,
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_02: you know, ticking boxes and adding things to my CV.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: But I just couldn't, I was just so angry.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I was,
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: after a while,
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was able to realise my anger was directed
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: towards how much waste was being created.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we were supposed to be the best ingredients in this restaurant.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so we were buying the best fish and the best seafood.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: But we were taking the best part from the best fish and putting the rest in the bin.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just like, simply like pulling these, you know, half-footed fish out of the bin.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_02: And we were like, guys, what's going on here?
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: Why are we not using this?
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: Can I use it for staff?
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, you can't.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: They said no.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like they said no, you can't even use it for staff.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_02: One day I made a trout head soup and I never forget.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because I got so much shit for making a trout head soup.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: So much.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but they were ordering in bones to make stock.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think they would order bones to
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: make stock.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was bonkers.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_02: But my chef, he was like, he was very good.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: He was very good at what he did.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: He was a very good cook.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: But he kind of pulled me aside one day.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: He's from the UK and he's like, look, I see what's happening.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: I can see your frustration.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like...
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_02: You're not going to find what you're looking for here, so you need to leave.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, shit.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_02: I've been following.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: But he's like, but you need to know about this restaurant.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: You need to know about Scylla.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: Slip the card across the table kind of vibe.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: I went home that night and did some research and came into work the next day and I quit.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I did my one month period and had no money,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_02: so I moved to Australia to save up to move to the UK to go to work.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it was this sort of like revelation,
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: kind of just got dropped on me and instantly I just knew that's what I needed to do.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: Because I love food so much and I'm so passionate about The industry and
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_02: the positive impact we can have through the industry.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_02: Now that I've got this thing to kind of latch my claws into, I'm just like, I'm on.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: It was game-changer.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: Initially,
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: I met Lara when I first arrived in London and we decided to not work together
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: at Cyro.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because she's much more talented than me.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, you go, you learn everything.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they relayed back to me, oh, this is how we'll go.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: But then on opening day, the sous chef walked out.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I did a guest chef appearance.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_03: Doug was like, what are we going to do?
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_03: It was opening night of Silo in London.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, look, George is at home.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'll call him and he'll come in and step in and go to job offer at the
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: same time.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was so cute.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: And how long were you guys there?
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_03: Six months.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: We were there from the opening of Silo London to COVID.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I got promoted to head chef like two weeks before
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: COVID.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_02: Which is like the dream job.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: I've moved across the world for this.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: Which is when we left the UK.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was during COVID.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was a very tough decision.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: Still gives me anxiety thinking about it.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking about the closure of the restaurant,
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: and as you said,
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: many different reasons aligned,
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: but one of the things you mentioned in the video where you announced you were going
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: to close is consistency with what you have worked for,
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: and part of it is to keep priorities clear, right?
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, the family and the closure of a cycle of the project, all that.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what I mean,
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: it's probably too soon to tell,
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: but in these five months or so,
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: what is the way you see regenerative agriculture
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: changing?
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: And also because you have related that with the family.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't think about it before,
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: but starting a family or having a baby is part of that regenerative cycle in a way.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if you guys have connected that.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: And also,
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: what do you miss from the restaurant that you cherish and you wouldn't like to lose
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: in the next stage of your work?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: I think that, I mean, starting with the farming question, I think it's...
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's so beautiful that this idea,
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_03: this kind of very general term of regenerative agriculture,
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: but for me it's this way where it's man and nature and animals in
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_03: the symbiotic relationship where
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: Biodiversity and
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_03: the thriving of an ecosystem can thrive because of this interaction
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_03: between these three.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not just like the rewilding side of or the,
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_03: you know, like, okay, let's just leave nature as it is and not disturb it.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: But there is a point of meeting, right?
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_03: And there is a point where we can actually be it.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_03: A force for good.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_03: We are a keystone species.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_03: We have a disproportionate impact on our environment.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: So can that be for good?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_03: And this is what attracts me so much about regenerative agriculture.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_03: And with the family side, I think that's even more important.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: What I saw as a child was destruction and extraction.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_03: And for years, I never realized that there was a different way to do it.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_03: Later, when I started understanding history and going into agriculture,
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_03: I understood a pre-industrialized system.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: But for years, it was just trauma.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_03: The only way to farm is to extract.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I love this idea that it's actually an interaction and
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: an involvement can actually mean something good.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_03: So moving to...
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_03: Farm is not to have a project where 80% of our food comes from our own farm.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_03: We do not have that intention.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: We love the idea of working in community, the resilience of it.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_03: This is what we've done so far and this is what will continue when we move to
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: a more rural location.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_03: It is to work with the local community and not to try to be an isolated system.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_03: But to have our children understand that and understand that,
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_03: when you see how long it takes to grow a carrot,
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_03: you're not going to throw it away when it's a little bit bendy,
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_03: you know, you're going to find a way to use it.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, those,
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_02: they're,
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_02: these two boys,
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: they're four in four months,
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: so they're still middle,
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_02: but they're like,
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_02: they're going to dictate every decision that we make,
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: for sure.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: A hundred percent.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_03: And because this
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_02: is like,
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_02: this is for them,
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_02: like it's,
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: and it's like,
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: For them to see,
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: I've never thought about it the way that you just put it actually,
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_02: like for them to see the regrowth and the reintroduction of species
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: and this like abundance,
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: hopefully they remember the growth and the good work you can do.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, like what, how's that going to set up their life?
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like they're going to continue, ideally they're going to continue this work.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the sort of like,
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_02: the sort of hotel that we want to have is like,
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: Something that we wish we could find now,
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: you know, like a place where you can go with your kids and eat on a tree.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_02: Or you can harvest some vegetables.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: You can get your kids into nature and they can really remember these experiences,
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_02: you know, and sort of...
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_03: But not in a retreat put on way, I think.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I need to go out with Cyrus over there, like, you know.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_03: Come here.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: this is the thing,
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_03: Julie, going to your last question, that I'm going to, I loved working at SEM.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_03: So I wasn't working in the kitchen at SEM.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_03: We also made this decision when we opened the restaurant.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was going to be on the floor and George in the kitchen.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_03: He's a way better cook than I am.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I like talking too much and he doesn't.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_03: So it was just the natural rules.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_03: But we always did something It was always genuine.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_03: The interactions were genuine.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_03: What we were doing was genuine.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_03: We were open about when we failed at things or when we couldn't figure something out.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_03: And luckily,
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_03: these days,
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_03: we have this amazing network of other restaurants that do take this as seriously
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_03: as we do.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it's very collaborative, the whole interaction and friendship with them.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: But I will miss, and it's something that I do want to take to the next project, is this...
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_03: Natural way of dealing with people and with humanity and with genuine care and
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_03: with intuition, but not put on.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_03: We don't like the idea.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_03: I think everything that we're trying to build is going away from this world
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_03: where we don't understand what's genuine anymore.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_03: We don't understand what's real.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_03: This is why I think like We question,
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_03: we say this all the time, like, can sustainability be tactile?
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like, can you touch a wall and, oh,
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_03: this is actually made from soil, like, this is round earth, oh, this is really cool.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, this landshade, this is mycelium, this is mushrooms, like, this is awesome.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_03: And the same with the way that we interact, right?
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_03: When we have a genuine conversation with a guest,
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: it is not pretentious or pompous or this idea that there's servitude involved,
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_03: but it's a real connection and done in a very natural way.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_03: This was always how we worked it same and people felt we did try to do this at
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_03: an excellent level.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_03: So the experience still was very,
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_03: you should feel taken care of and,
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_03: Everything was done properly,
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_03: but the interaction itself, there was no pretense about it.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is very much the foundation of how we see hospitality in the next project as well.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_03: What did you miss about that?
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was hoping you weren't going to ask anything.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was pretty burnt out, to be honest, at the end.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was taking a lot on my shoulders in the last six months.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like the box that we were working in, I was hitting the ceiling for a very long time.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_02: When it closed, I was just super relieved.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_03: It was actually quite frustrating because we got the announcement that we were
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_03: on 50 Best Discovery the day after.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_03: But it was good to have that merit for what we did,
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_03: but it was interesting to see your reaction of like,
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, one
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: of my friends put it very nicely though.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_02: She was like,
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_02: if you got this, like,
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_02: this is one thing that we thought that we would,
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_02: you know, like it would be amazing, but realistically it's not going to happen.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're a tiny little first low budget, but she put it very nicely.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like if we'd gotten where we were still operating,
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_02: it would have just fallen into this category of like,
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like a pat on the back, all right, next, let's move on.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_02: I've got other things I need to focus on, like, let's go.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, cheers.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_02: See you later.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_02: But now it's like, okay, this is for us.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, of course, the team, we're like, we can be thankful for it.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: We can enjoy it.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: We can sort of not let it get sort of just pushed to the side.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not a driver for anything else because we don't have a restaurant.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_03: So it's good.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, everyone, for listening.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: Please check us out on Substack.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: Just go to neworder.com.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: Keep in touch with George and Laura and see what they're going to do and
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: where they're going to end up.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's going to be cool and you're going to hear a lot more about them in
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: the years to come.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: And a big thank you to my friend Pat Buzzard for providing the music to the show.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and pre-order, Eating the Amazon on Amazon Bookshop, those places.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: It helps.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:06:45
  [music]