Fighting food waste, one fritter at a time: Q&A with Ellen Kassoff of Equinox and Federal Fritter
From lemon-peel limoncello to donations of surplus meals, D.C.’s Equinox restaurant has long demonstrated that fine dining and food waste reduction can go hand-in-hand. During the pandemic, co-owners and husband and wife team Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff not only adjusted operations at Equinox, but they also opened a new restaurant, Federal Fritter & Bistro, in Rehoboth Beach, Del. While Kassoff tended to her herb garden at the new restaurant, RescueDish’s Rachael Jackson spoke with her about minimizing waste, the impact of the pandemic, and how we can fight food waste, one delicious, beachy fritter at a time.
Ellen Kassoff and Todd Gray at their new restaurant, Federal Fritter & Bistro, in Rehoboth Beach, Del. (Photo courtesy of Federal Fritter & Bistro)
You’ve been working on sustainability since Equinox first opened. How has that looked from 1999 to today?
I think that sometimes you just operate from your heart and there's not always a name for it. So in 1999 the focus was really on the use of local growers and recognizing our Mid-Atlantic region and not always having food trucked in, from somewhere else far away in the country or the world.
Now we look at it holistically. Twenty years later it’s like an octopus with a lot of different tentacles. So you can go on the humanely raised side, the locally grown side, the no-food-waste side, the lower-your-footprint side. But it all definitely ties in. You can’t just say it’s one thing that pulls you in this direction. It’s a combination of a lot of things.
What was the first step you took to target your waste?
Starting to understand recycling and having the ability to donate food that was leftover from either a catered event or a restaurant. In a restaurant there’s inevitably food waste that doesn’t have to go waste. You can’t always reuse everything. We can’t take a meal that’s been cooked and repurpose it to another meal, but we can give it to someone who is food insecure.
In terms of planning your menu, what do you do to keep it tight and avoid food waste?
You really monitor mise-en-place so you’re not throwing away a lot.
(Editor’s note: mise-en-place is a term chefs use to describe their systems of gathering and arranging the ingredients and tools for cooking. NPR has more. )
Corn cob soup at Equinox during a RescueDish event. (Photo by Mary Kong-DeVito)
When the pandemic first hit were you able to find homes for your food?
We don’t sit on a lot of product in general. We were shut down those two weeks, but we put stuff in the freezer. We never really threw out a lot of food.
How did the pandemic affect your operations?
One of the first things to go in food service was open buffets. We have a very popular plant-based brunch on Sundays. It was always in an all-you-can-eat format. We would even put signs up pre-pandemic saying, take what you want, but only what you need, hinting to people, please restrain yourself. But they’d just take a lot because it was out there. There was a lot of waste in that. The hard labor of four or five people goes into making any one dish and seeing that go in the trash really just hurts your heart. There’s this American perception that a big huge heaping portion is a good value for your money. It’s not if you throw it away.
After the pandemic we couldn’t have the buffet any more, but we still wanted to offer all you can eat. Now, if you want more, you have to ask for it. People don’t ask if they’re not going to eat it. The server brings them another two pancakes whereas a person at the buffet will serve themselves another six.
Has the pandemic caused you to change your menu?
Everything got scaled back, not just because of the pandemic, but because of the labor market. I don’t want to say scaled down, I want to say, scaled appropriately for what was going on in the world.
Is a shorter menu something that helps you waste less?
For sure. At least on our end we’ve wasted less. The consumer side is a whole different animal.
You opened Federal Fritter in Rehoboth Beach earlier this year. Can you tell me more about what you’re doing on the sustainability front there?
I have my little alley farm here that we’re using to grow herbs like mint for mojitios. We’re using local produce. We’re cooking with the seasons. Our packaging for our fritters is all in cardboard and lower impact trash. We don’t use a lot of plastic. I was going to sell retail food, but I decided not to. It’s just more trash, more waste. Everything is done with new eyes now because of the pandemic. You go about business in a different way.
Crispy potato skins with lemon truffle sour cream at Equinox. (Photo by Mary Kong-DeVito)
Is there anything on either of the restaurants’ menus now that demonstrates low-waste cooking?
One of the things I love about fritters is it’s really based on utilizing all parts of vegetables. You can take a not so perfect cauliflower, it might not look perfect for a cold preparation salad, but in a fritter it’s great. We’ve done fritters with stems and leaves. All this kind of “food waste” tastes great when it’s tempura or battered and, let’s face it, fried.
What does food waste reduction look like in high end kitchens like yours?
Todd’s doing a fritto misto tonight with several different ends and pieces of fish. He fillets whole fish. He utilizes all parts of it. If it’s not enough to put on a menu he’ll serve it as a capané.
The fritter batter lives in one of those deli containers and you have to scoop it out and drop it into your oil. A lot of chefs would just take the extra scraps of batter in a container and throw it in the dish washing station and all that batter would go down the drain. But Todd goes and gets a rubber spatula. Little tiny acts like that can help you save so much.
People say, “Oh my God, the problem is so big. There’s too much to deal with.” It’s not so big if you don’t look so far away, but look at what’s right underneath you. Don’t toss it in the trash saying oh what’s the point. I guarantee you by the end of the year if you add up those little scrapes of batter, we’ve saved $2,000 - $3,000. It’s an economic thing as much as it is a value driven thing.
Ellen Kassoff serves guests at Federal Fritter in Rehoboth Beach. (Photo by Tiffany Caldwell)
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.