Welcome back to Good Taste, your weekly helping of Bay Area food finds and minds. Today, we’re looking at creative local efforts to fight food waste.
A new restaurant called Shuggie’s Trash Pie & Natural Wine (3349 23rd Street, San Francisco) will open later this week with a mission to help mitigate the impact of food waste on climate change. The concept comes from activists Chef David Murphy and Kayla Abe, who are also the owners of Ugly Pickle Co., which has rescued and used more than 40,000 pounds of unpretty produce.
The Shuggie’s menu is centered around “Grandma-style” thin-square pizza and fun accompaniments that all use upcycled ingredients.
“Think misshapen or blemished produce, farm surplus, off-cuts, byproducts, and bycatch,” the menu clarifies.
This shows up in the pizza dough made with spent oat flour and the whey byproduct of the ricotta “fluff” and in dishes like “Sexy Fries,” made with overgrown sweet potatoes, nori and an aioli made with shiitake and Parmesan rind; preserved mussels with excess dough crumbs and seven-year-old citrus; and “Buffalo Everything,” which utilizes chicken wings, livers, gizzards, and hearts.
Ugly Pickle products are served solo and as part of kakiage a stack of tempura pickles, green onion roots, squash scraps, and shiso ranch dressing. For dessert, there’s “Two Bites of Chocolate,” with two pots de crème, aerated banana, banana peel crispies, and “stardust.” Beyond the admirable mission, this just looks like a really fun and playful place.
Shuggie’s Trash Pie & Natural Wine opens on Fri., Apr. 22; hours are Tuesday through Thursday from 5-10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. to midnight.
I also recently learned that there’s a nonprofit social enterprise in San Francisco called Replate that gathers surplus food items from businesses and local schools to communities in need. According to a release, Replate has “spared 1,514,433 pounds of food from landfills, created 1,262,027 meals to date, saved 371,755,238 gallons of water, and diverted 2,783,514 pounds of CO2” since Syrian immigrant and Cal alum Maen Mahfoud founded it in 2016. Replate’s website has a scheduling system where restaurants and other businesses can arrange for a food pickup. Other nonprofits can also request food donations through the site.
Another creative way that consumers can help to fight food waste locally is to purchase surprise goodie bags of excess meals and treats from local restaurants via Too Good To Go, an international social impact app that has operated in the Bay Area for almost a year. Each day brings different discount offers to consider, and there’s a fun Subreddit where you can check out photos of different hauls from around the world, including locals like KoJa Kitchen, Flour & Branch, Philz Coffee, and Burma Superstar.
Eye-cheat on your diet at Tamara’s site California Eating.
