Eating out in London without impacting the planet is easier than ever, thanks to restaurants which offset carbon, grow their own food and everything in between.
As more and more people question the impact the food consumption has on the planet, restaurants around the world have begun to transform how they prepare, cook and source dishes. London’s growing sustainable restaurant scene features some of the world’s best locally sourced ingredients, innovative cooking methods and ways of giving back – they’re the perfect eco-friendly option when visiting the capital, with no compromise on taste.
As cosy as a local pub but as refined as any of London’s best restaurants, The Three Stags near Waterloo serves a plethora of classics, from pizza to Sunday roasts. They are consistently delicious and have a loyal customer base while remaining one of the most sustainable pubs in the city. Dishes use sustainable Welsh lamb and organic ingredients, and bread is made using their own 3.5-year-old sourdough. Absolutely everything is recycled here, including food waste, which is subsequently composted, and they now work with the Sustainable Spirit Co., which uses refillable containers for gin, vodka, rum and more. Perfect for a summer’s day, their rooftop garden isn’t just a leafy suntrap for enjoying a beer - it is also home to the restaurant’s beehives and a small garden growing tomatoes, lemons and herbs.
Having worked their way up the ranks from a stall in some of London’s best food markets to their present location in Browns, Mayfair, Native are true champions of sustainable cooking. Their flavourful British menu uses local and home-grown ingredients that have all been picked, foraged and fished in the UK. Their menu changes seasonally, but expect dishes like lamb polpette with pickled shiitake, strawberry char siu pork neck and Orkney scallops with sobrasada. They’re currently serving wines from Sussex vineyard Rathfinny, although their seasonal cocktails are excellent. For dessert, their unique marrowmel, made with white chocolate and bone marrow caramel, can also be bought online.
This zero-waste restaurant in London’s Covent Garden has rightly been awarded one Michelin star for both its fantastic food and dedication to sustainability. Chef-at-large Adam Handling ensures that both the normal and vegetarian tasting menus use and showcase some of Britain’s best ingredients. Aside from local produce, Handling also encourages the restaurant team to go foraging together, and any spare ingredients are used to make the Frog’s delicious cocktails.
The tasting menu includes delicately prepared dishes, such as BBQ scallops, Cornish cod and Balmoral chicken and on the menu is a little map of the UK so that you can pinpoint exactly where your food has come from.
Everyone has heard of Silo, the world’s ‘first zero-waste restaurant’ in Hackney Wick - and if you haven’t, where have you been? There’s no waste, no packaging and as many ingredients as possible are made in-house, including flour, for which they even have their own grinding mill and fermented drinks, which come from their onsite brewery. They also believe in ‘nose to tail’, meaning they use all parts of an animal that dies. The furniture is upcycled, the plates are made from plastic bags and the crockery from wine bottles. Unique dishes coming out of the kitchen right now include mussels with sea spaghetti and alliums with cuttlefish garum. You simply can’t get more sustainable than Silo.
In its airy, elegant location in a wing of Somerset House, Spring is bringing sustainable dining to the masses. Led by respected chef Skye Gyngell, the food here is all local and sustainably sourced. However, it was Gyngell’s Scratch tasting menu that took Spring to new heights, an entirely zero-waste menu which changes daily. The dishes are all made with ‘discarded’ ingredients: wonky fruit, pasta trimmings, homemade jams and other bits that are frequently rejected from supermarkets; currently, it’s spiced quail with wild garlic and herb butter tortellini. So successful was the menu in both deliciousness and for raising awareness of food waste that Gyngell decided on a new initiative - banning plastics, making Spring the first single-use plastic-free restaurant in London.
Shoreditch is a pioneer for sustainability within London’s boroughs, and the Culpeper is one of its restaurants leading the charge. Almost everything you can find on their menu, minus the fish, has come from their own rooftop garden. This includes everything from vegetables like courgettes, tomatoes and root veg to herbs, spices and even the garnish on your cocktail. The rest of their ingredients, such as meat, milk and cheese, are all sourced from ethical suppliers and kitchen waste is pumped right back into the garden. This year’s menu includes dishes like fennel and mint salad and mackerel with crispy kale. If you really want to get stuck in, you can volunteer or do a workshop to learn about urban gardening.
We’ve seen local produce and zero-waste has been done, but this Marylebone restaurant is taking things one step further by going completely carbon neutral. Jikoni was the first restaurant in the UK to achieve this by using sustainably sourced ingredients, eliminating waste and turning it into fuel. They use renewable gas in the kitchens and have partnered with Climate Neutral to offset any CO2 into planet-positive projects. Although the ingredients are British, flavours hail from across Asia, East Africa and the Middle East in dishes like roasted tandoori cauliflower, kuku paka (Kenyan coconut chicken curry) and Devonshire crab fritti.
Remember we mentioned nose-to-tail cooking? Well St. John - which has three London restaurants, has quite literally made the term its slogan. Menus are updated daily but generally include unusual cuts of meat, unique ingredients and ultra-fresh herbs and garnishes. There’s almost too much to choose from, but plates like the nettle soup and snails, pot roast mutton and ox liver with horseradish tell you what to expect. Their desserts; which include a ginger loaf with butterscotch and lemon sorbet with vodka, are excellent, but to truly satisfy your sweet tooth, head to one of their London bakeries which are bursting with handmade doughnuts, breads and sweet pastries.
