Shuggie’s Trash Pie makes garbage edible

The Future. A new restaurant called Shuggie’s Trash Pies is highlighting the amount of food that goes to waste by creating a rotating menu of dishes using ingredients no one else wants to use. So far, reviews say it’s delicious, which could inspire other restaurants to figure out how to incorporate food waste into their dishes to find new flavors and make the whole food industry more sustainable.

Rubbish to plate

Per Fast Company, one San Francisco restaurant is looking to serve up a solution to food waste.

• Shuggie’s Trash Pie makes almost all of its dishes using cuts of meat that other restaurants won’t use, byproducts of different meals, or vegetables that farmers were going to throw away because they weren’t pretty enough.

• That includes meatballs made out of beef hearts, a crudo made from swordfish belly, and pizza crust made with spent oats (a byproduct of creating oat milk).

• Each dish incorporates three to five upcycled ingredients, with anything not destined for the landfill coming from sustainable sources and local farms.

• And the menu changes weekly to take advantage of whatever food waste is readily available — a feature that could keep diners coming back to explore.

With somewhere between 30-40% of all food grown in the US sent to the trash heap, Shuggie’s Trash Pies may have a lot of unique ingredients to choose from.