A new restaurant called SILO – dubbed ‘the UK’s first zero-waste restaurant’ – has opened in Brighton’s North Laines. They mill their own flour, make yoghurt and culture cream, roll oats and bake bread, as well as brew vinegar and beer, grow mushrooms and cure meat. On the menu you’ll find curious dishes such as heirloom tomatoes and smoked black quinoa or whole partridge with smoked sweet potato and fermented ramson (around £8-12 for lunch), followed by foraged fruits, nettle jelly and iced elderberry (£5). They say:
Today’s food industry is in a mess. Half of the world’s produce is wasted and the food we eat is so plastic, it’s actually worse than waste itself. We believe that all ingredients are productive, some just need a little extra love. At SILO all our ingredients are treated with respect, allowing them to keep their integrity. All that doesn’t get consumer is eaten by our compost machine – turning the useless into the useful.
The restaurant interior is designed by husband and wife team Baines&Fricker, who are also based in the seaside town (the husband half Steve Baines is a furniture maker while Eliza Fricker was previously an illustrator and screen printer). For SILO they were the perfect fit: a local business with a passion for ‘long-lasting design’ and ‘an ability to elevate the mundane and unremarkable’. Inside they have created a raw and utilitarian interior, repurposing old school tables and using office floor insulation to make bench seating. The brick walls have been painted over in white, while brass lighting hangs from the ceiling and boxy OSB chairs are scattered around. I’ll definitely be paying a visit next time I’m down…
All images: courtesy Lisa Devlin
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