Eco-nomy Class
British chef Barny Haughton shows that sustainability cuts two ways—for the environment and for the bottom line of his über green restaurant in Bristol.
Andy Lynes reports.
It's not easy being green. Just ask Barny Haughton, chef/co-owner of Bordeaux Quay, the United Kingdom's most ecologically friendly restaurant. Opened in Bristol in September 2006 at a cost of £3 million ($5.9 million), the 16,000-square-foot converted harborside warehouse encompasses a ground floor brasserie, a bakery, a deli, a first-floor fine dining restaurant, a wine bar, and a cookery school.
The size and scope of the project alone make it one of the most ambitious openings outside London in recent memory. Take into account Haughton's commitment to locally sourced organic ingredients, minimal environmental impact, and social responsibility, and you soon realize that the 56 year old chef isn't making life simple for himself.
"It's funny, because when I first set foot in the building, in 2004, I was just going to give it a lick of paint," recalls Haughton, who bears such a close resemblance to Steven Spielberg that he could be mistaken for the film director's long-lost twin. "Then suddenly it seemed sensible to try something a bit more radical. It's my intention that this should be a business that will prove you can operate on environmentally sustainable grounds and be profitable."
It's not surprising that such a forward-thinking project should have opened in Bristol. With a population of about half a million people, it's southwestern England's largest city. It's a cosmopolitan, progressive place that boasts one of the country's top 10 universities and is also home to the BBC's Natural History Unit. The Soil Association, the U.K.'s largest organic accreditation organization, has its headquarters in the city. The surrounding countryside has the highest concentration of organic and artisanal food producers anywhere in the country.
Although parts of the city, particularly the south side, continue to suffer from socioeconomic deprivation and attendant drug problems, since the 1980s millions of pounds have been invested in regenerating the city, including the harborside area, which comprises an art gallery and an IMAX cinema.
In the recent past, Bristol's restaurant scene has been unsettled, a Michelin-starred restaurant having relocated to nearby Bath because of a lack of customers and another having closed. Given the continued success of veteran chef/restaurateur Stephen Markwick and ambitious restaurants like Bell's Diner attracting critical acclaim, though, the city seems to be turning a gastronomic corner.
Although Bordeaux Quay has sparked something of a trend—consider such recent openings as Acorn House in London, Iglu in Edinburgh, and, the latest, Carpe Diem on the opposite side of the harbor from Bordeaux Quay, all touting their eco-credentials—Haughton is no Johnny-come-lately to the green scene. He's been a dedicated advocate of organic products and practices since he opened his first Bristol restaurant, Rocinantes, nearly two decades ago. He hasn't always been so vocal in his support of the cause, however.
"Back then, organics were seen as hippieish, almost cultlike, so I made a decision not to go public. It was only when I became involved with the Organic Food Awards in 1994 that I 'came out,'" he admits.
Now Haughton finds himself surrounded by like-minded people, including his business partner, property developer John Pontin, O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), whom he calls "the quiet green man of Bristol."
"He came to a talk I gave to the Royal Society of Arts on food waste in the restaurant industry and on the back of that invited me to open Bordeaux Quay," says Haughton in softly spoken, measured tones. "He's immensely committed to sustainability. His whole career has been about encouraging the right kind of development in Bristol."
Work on the building started in July 2005. It took nearly a year to transform the former gloomy nightclub into the bright airy space it is today.
"It was full of little rooms and bars and acres of toilets. We stripped it right back to the shell and started again from scratch." In line with the project's ecological aims, as many as possible of the existing materials were reused. Reclaimed wood from the original ceiling has found a new home as acoustic baffling on the ground floor, and the fridges left over from the building's nightclub days have been serviced rather than scrapped. "It was a massive challenge because the construction industry is not used to recycling. We talk about materialist values, but I think the culture we live in is the opposite: we don't value materials at all."
In addition to the restaurant's being maximally green in terms of materials (oak from sustainable forests is used extensively throughout the building), energy saving systems have been put in place. Instead of being air conditioned, the restaurant is kept cool in the summer as warm air rises and escapes through the electronically controlled atrium windows. In the winter, the building is kept warm partly by heat from the in-house bakery's being naturally absorbed by the concrete structure during the day and released at night. Rainwater supplies the toilets and the dishwasher.
Bordeaux Quay is so green that it even has its own sustainable development manager, in the form of ex–marketing executive Amy Robinson. "I started work in January 2006, and it's been a very steep learning curve because there isn't anything like this job in the catering industry. It's not purely technical, educational, or academic; it's all of those things," she says. "The first couple of months I was getting involved in issues around the materials used in the building, learning about the technologies being employed, and putting policies in place on how we would source our food. Now it's about maintaining a momentum and doing all the things we said we would do."
In practical terms, that could mean anything from arranging a think tank at the restaurant for local environmental and ecological groups to attending to the less glamorous issue of recycling kitchen waste. Bordeaux Quay piloted a recycling scheme that reduced the amount of kitchen waste going to landfill. In conjunction with other recycling processes for cardboard, paper, wood, plastic, glass, metal, and cooking oil, among other things, the restaurant sends less than 50 percent of all its waste to landfill.
From using highly efficient washable microfiber cloths that minimize the use of chemical cleaning agents, fair-trade cotton for staff uniforms, and solar hot water panels to installing low-energy lighting in the restaurant, Haughton's commitment to ecologically sound values is evidenced in nearly every detail of the business. Inevitably, some compromises have been made in the name of commercial viability. The kitchen, for example, differs little from any other in its technical specifications.
"When I designed it, I envisaged heat exchange systems, low-energy-consumption ovens, induction hobs that cease to consume energy when you remove the pan, and so on," says Haughton. "With those good intentions in mind, I realized after doing a lot of research that, using that kind of equipment, I wasn't going to be able to produce the food at the speed I needed to in order to serve upwards of 320 people a day."
Instead, Haughton has turned his attention to streamlining kitchen practices, making them as energy efficient as he can. "I think that as an industry we've become attached to certain methods that are perceived as being 'the way.' If Heston Blumenthal challenges the chemistry of cooking, then I challenge all that stuff."
In nearly all professional kitchens, the first job of the day is to switch on the ovens. At Bordeaux Quay they are left off during the morning prep period. When the range is fired up, work is scheduled to be as energy efficient as is feasible. If a pan of water is brought to the boil, it's used for as many different jobs as possible, and blanched vegetables are never left under running water to be refreshed or fast-chilled over ice. "People have an idea that you get a brighter color if you fast-chill, but we've done a blind tasting with ice and without, and I know that's not true, unless I'm using the wrong beans and the wrong ice."
Haughton estimates that 40 percent of his customers come to his restaurants because of what he stands for, so getting the food right is as critical to him as it is to any other chef. Happily, the restaurant generated positive column inches in most of the national press. My lunch showed why. Squid with garlic and chile, a classic bourride, and a very fine treacle tart were intelligently conceived, accurately cooked, and zinged with clear punchy flavors.
"The opening period was quite a struggle," admits Haughton. "Now I've got a new head chef, Liz Payne, who worked for Sally Clarke in London for the past 18 years. She's just a godsend."
The daily changing menu (old menus, as you might expect, are recycled as fax paper in the restaurant's office) reflects Haughton's long-standing passion for what he describes as "provincial European cuisine": Provençal fish soup with rouille, Gruyère, and croutons or a tomato risotto. Despite the majority of ingredients' being sourced within a 50 mile radius, what you won't see is individual suppliers listed on the menu. Instead, there's a cover-all statement: "The staple ingredients on the Bordeaux Quay menu are sourced from organic suppliers, growers, producers, and farms in the West Country and the southwest of England. All other ingredients come from suppliers whom we know and trust."
"It's almost de rigueur for restaurants to put the supplier name on the menu, but I think it's been overdone," says Haughton. "We had an idea of creating a food map so that you could go on the Web site and check out where the farms were. But unless you live next door or in the village down the road, it doesn't really mean anything."
Being organic means that Haughton pays a premium for his ingredients, which affects his bottom line. "We'll never get better than 32 percent food costs here, and at the moment it's 35 percent. You can make money in this business with organics, but you've got to be constantly vigilant. There's no room for waste or mistakes, and portions have to be absolutely spot on."
Haughton reckons that he spends around £9,000 ($17,773) a week on food, which gives him some bargaining power with the wholesale organic suppliers, but there are other ways of mitigating the higher costs.
"I'm currently paying around £40 for two saddles of organic lamb, which means that if we get eight portions, they would cost us about £5 each. To make money on that we'd need to charge £23, but the Bristol market will stand only £18.50, so we try to get 10 portions and kind of dress it up a bit. I served lamb with a Provençal herb crust and a really gorgeous gratin of rutabaga and celeriac and some nice chard. It looked fabulous on the plate, and you wouldn't think, 'That's not very much meat.'"
If Haughton is keen to minimize Bordeaux Quay's negative impact on the environment, he's equally concerned about maximizing its positive impact on the community. In October 2006, he ran a series of workshops for Bristol Young Careers, teaching children who care for parents incapable of looking after themselves how to prepare cheap healthful meals.
In spring 2007, he launched a program to train cooks from local schools in the Bordeaux Quay cookery school, including a group of children from Bristol's deprived area of Knowle West, to spend a week baking, cooking, and eating at the restaurant.
Although Haughton acknowledges he has ambitious plans for the educational side of the operation, he dismisses the accusation made by one food critic that he is as preachy as "bollocks." There is, however, an undeniably evangelistic side to him.
"Everyone knows that there's a lot wrong in this country and we have to do something about it. To be part of a place that has nailed its colors to that mast is a good place to be, even if it's tough. People are very quick to be intolerant and critical and skeptical. I don't know how many people have said, 'It's all just a gimmick, isn't it? You're just doing it for PR.' You can imagine what I feel like saying."
