One night we were chatting with one of our clients about the choices we made to keep our restaurant green and keep a low carbon footprint. Our client expressed her interest and intoned that we should share that with everyone as Earth Day approaches. Taking her advice, here is the story behind those green choices. It’s a story Yasha calls:
Under the Tablecloth
Did you know that Le Jardin is a completely Green, Eco-Friendly business? We believe in a wholesome approach that cares for our Earth so we can leave a healthy planet to our children and their children. To that end, we made several choices in our restaurant design.
Renewable Green Energy
Unlike most commercial kitchens, our whole kitchen runs on electricity and therefore uses only renewable energy.Both our flat-top range and our convection oven have been converted to run on electricity. Yasha’s pride and joy of her kitchen are her two Eurodib Induction burners. These induction tops heat up remarkably fast and cool quickly, while giving Yasha exacting control over her cooking and very little wasted heat and energy.
Organics Program
Yasha uses “the whole buffalo” in her cooking strategy. This means nothing is wasted, from carrot peelings and veggie tops to bones and fresh skins; all these kitchen byproducts are kept to make stocks. All these lovely flavourful stocks form the basis of her amazing sauces and incredible soups. Then all our organic waste goes in to organic bins for composting.
Low Waste
Having worked in several commercial kitchens and hotels, I can assure you there are enormous amounts of waste going to our landfills nightly. While many commercial kitchens have greatly improved this behaviour over this past decade, they cannot manage their waste as carefully as we have been able to accomplish. Our focus of Tasting Menus means we shop weekly only for the things we need on each new menu. Tasting Menus also assure us of a good general usage of all the ingredients we use weekly. While we do take out our garbage often - I would doubt that we would fill one large garbage bag, even if we had saved up all our garbage for the whole week.
Better Use of Products and Animals
Ala Carte dining in our competitor’s restaurants requires amassing large quantities of certain meat cuts. (ie: orgering dozens of Strip Loins for their Ala Carte menu) However, we don’t grow Strip Loins, we grow cows. While our regularly rotating menus we use can be more mindful and use other cuts to better use the whole animals and work with the best and freshest items every week. In this way we can work with our suppliers and support them in greener operations as well.
Reduce Landfill Waste
Finally, we use fine china and unique stemware collected from Thrift Stores, saving these items from our Landfills. Similarly, all of our chairs were found free on CraigsList and Yasha recovered them. This helps with the rustic charm of our room and gives these items new life in our restaurant and saves them from our Landfills.
Happy Earth Day
While we celebrate the coming Earth Day, I wanted to share the many ways we have worked to keep our restaurant as green as possible. Thank you for supporting us and through us supporting measures to keep our planet and our environment healthy and green for generations to come. Yasha and I look forward to seeing you again soon - and if you'd like a tour of the kitchen to see some of these ideas implemented, please ask; We are happy to show you in person.
All the very best,
Quinn and Yasha of Le Jardin Restaurant
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