Sustainable cooking has expanded dramatically across the city
Nose-to-tail cookery is an approach where an entire animal is used by the kitchen, including high-value cuts like fillets, breasts and chops as well as offal, fat, heads, bones and skin. This is no longer an unfamiliar concept to diners, thanks in large part to Fergus Henderson, co-founder of St. JOHN and author of Nose toTail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking.
As well as being ethical, using all parts of an animal is also a more sustainable way to operate. Intensive animal agriculture has a huge impact on the environment so minimising waste from this sector is crucial for the health of the planet. Financially it allows restaurants to maximise profits by keeping produce out of the bin.
But this philosophy is not just applicable to big animal carcasses; there are London restaurants doing the same with chicken (beak-to-tail), seafood (fin-to-gill) and even vegetables (root-to-peel), so everyone can eat more sustainably.
St. JOHN
The influence of St. JOHN on the UK’s food scene is so widespread that it’s now hard to appreciate just how revolutionary Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver were when they opened their Smithfield restaurant in 1994. Did anyone eat bone marrow before they put it on their menu? Pioneers of the nose-to-tail movement, the St. JOHN menu still epitomises this philosophy today with dishes like the iconic roast bone marrow & parsley salad, devilled kidneys on toast, tripe and onions, Middlewhite ham with radishes and sorrel, half cod’s head with puntarelle and anchovy, and calf’s liver with beetroot and horseradish.
Kima
Andreas Labridis and Nikos Roussos, the co-owners of Greek restaurant OPSO, are showcasing fin-to-gill cookery at their seafood restaurant Kima. Using various fish butchery and dry ageing techniques, they ensure that all parts of the fish get used – fillets get sliced and served raw with extra virgin olive oil, bones are turned into broth for fish soup, roe gets made into taramas, and tails are turned into ‘shanks’. You can even pick your preferred type of fish from the counter display and have the kitchen prepare it in a variety of different ways.
Origin City
This Farringdon spot advertises itself as both nose-to-tail and pasture-to-plate. Run by the same family team behind wine bar and shop 56 West Smithfield, all of the meat (organic and heritage breed) is sourced from their own farm in Argyll, Scotland. It’s all butchered in-house by Executive Chef Graham Chatham and his team, and turned into everything from charcuterie and sausages to crispy brawn and Texel lamb with sweetbreads.
Manteca
if you didn’t know what to expect at Manteca, the pig head sculpture hanging by the door should give you some clue. Yes it’s an Italian joint doing hand-rolled pasta dishes but there’s a huge focus on whole-animal butchery – there’s even an in-house salumeria on the lower floor where the team make a range of cured meats, including coppa, guanciale, and black pepper salami. Sharing cuts of meat sit alongside dishes like pig skin ragu with parmesan and crispy skin, and beef battuta with raw beef, burnt onion oil and beef fat crumb.
Holy Carrot
Originally launched by Irina Linovich back in 2020, the concept of Holy Carrot is all about veg-forward, sustainable and creative cooking. Daniel Watkins leads the kitchen at the Portobello Road restaurant where he runs on a low-waste ‘root to peel’ philosophy and uses various fermentation and pickling techniques to make full use of the vegetables they source.
Hotori
This yakitori restaurant in Holborn celebrates all parts of a chicken with its ‘beak to tail’ menu of skewers using free-range, slow-reared birds from Fosse Meadows. You can get wing, chicken oyster, drumstick, inner thigh, breast, heart, gizzard, liver, cartilage and skin, and there’s a Beak to Tail set that features 17 different cuts.
Whole Beast
The clue really is in the name with this one. Nose-to-tail live-fire concept Whole Beast, run by Sam and Alicja Bryant, takes residences at various pub and brewery kitchens around town (previous haunts include the Fat Walrus and the Montpelier, and they’re currently set up at Exale Tap in Walthamstow). The duo create supercharged versions of recognisable dishes – as well as an award-winning aged cheeseburger, the menu includes smoked mutton shoulder tacos; deep-fried pig’s head nduja & scamorza pot pie; wagyu, shortrib and stout loaded fries; and pork fat BBQ sauce. They also host the Coup de Gras event series where they invite guest chefs to create a dish for the one-off meaty menu.
Dinings SW3
Dinings SW3’s chef proprietor Masaki Sugisaki is really big on sustainability, carefully sourcing his fish from Cornwall and Scotland and running his kitchen with a gill-to-tail ethos. He and his team work hard to minimise wastage in the kitchen; with a turbot for example, the fillets can be grilled, meat left on the bones can be scraped and made into a tartare, the outer fin muscle can be tunre into sushi, the roe can be made into bottarga, the head and skin can be used for stock, and even the fish fins can be infused into sake. Masaki also hosts a gill-to-tail dinner series, where guest chefs join him for a four-hands dinner that makes use of every part of each fish.
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