Sustainable Sustenance

Gone are the days when London was a gastronomic backwater. Michelin, the Bible of fine dining, this year awarded stars to 53 London-based restaurants (compared with 42 in New York City, as an example).

At the three-starred Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal brings to Britain advances in molecular gastronomy. Beyond the Isles, British celebrity chefs — Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and April Bloomfield among others — have spread their seeds and heralded new trends.

“London, it is both a receiver of global trends and a processor of them, and also a generator of trends,” proposes Carolyn Steel, architect and author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes our Lives. And England, as much as anywhere else, is advancing the idea of “green eating.” The concept of food miles, for example, was coined by Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London’s City University, to denote the distance groceries must travel to reach our mouths, and remains one key criteria for determining how sustainable our food is.

England’s Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, outlines sustainability in terms of reducing the negative effects on the environment of food supply chains; protecting natural resources; promoting health and well-being amongst communities; celebrating food culture, and supporting local jobs, livelihoods and economies.

It’s a bit of a mouthful, but three times a day it comes time to put all this theory into practice. Here’s a list of ecologically-minded London restaurants, for traveling foodies keen to minimize the environmental footprint of their meals. The places listed below cover a variety of preferences and categories, and of course, they’re are also quite delicious, because as Ms. Steel underscores, “in all ways food is a win. We can’t opt out; it’s universal.”

Brawn
49 Columbia Road, London E2

Other than a seasonally oriented menu in which local provenance is king, the main sustainability draw is the wine list, composed of wines that are either organic, bio-dynamic or aim for other sustainable techniques for this otherwise resource-intensive luxury good.

The Natural Kitchen
77/78 Marylebone High Street, London W1U

Addressing the chic bohemian bourgeoisie crowd of Marylebone, this deli/café/restaurant/gourmet shop gives a feel-good spin to delicious (albeit pricey) foodstuffs. The priority is good taste, and it just so happens that seasonal, organic, free range and local are all harbingers of flavor. With a focus on quality over quantity, sometimes we must pay a price for sustainability.

Saf
The Barkes Building, Whole Foods Market 1st Floor, London W8

Saf, which stands for “simple authentic food” (and means “pure” in Turkish), is an award-winning vegan restaurant. With a menu composed solely of plant products, issues of animal welfare, factory farming and dwindling fish supplies become moot. However, produce often is sourced from farther afoot, meaning food miles might undo gains made elsewhere. (Out east? See also their Shoreditch location).

Duke of Cambridge
30 St Peter’s Street, London N1

Open since December 1998, the UK’s first and only Soil Association–certified organic gastropub has always sourced from independent and organic producers, including its brews. Sustainable Marine Stewardship Council-certified fish is used when possible and food miles are a key consideration in decision-making. To top it off, electricity comes from Good Energy, a company which routes payments to renewable sources.

Leon
35 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F

A founding member of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, this 11-strong chain of eateries aims to bring our highfalutin foodie trend to the masses by offering sustenance that is not only sustainable, but also economical and delivered quickly. Specifically, Leon shoots for seasonal ingredients, freshness, local production, minimal and recyclable packaging and transparency in their processes whenever possible.

Feng Sushi
1 Adelaide Road, London NW3

It’s easy to focus on our diet’s land-based impacts, but our taste for seafood is also undermining aquatic stocks. At Feng Sushi, only sustainable fish sources are used, including innovative farming techniques and products like hook-and-line caught yellowfin tuna (in place of the quickly disappearing bluefin). Ingredients are mostly local or European, with occasional Japanese supplies coming via land or sea.

Like this feature? Check out our other eating guides to Miami or New York.