That Lemon Slice on Your Cocktail Is Contributing More Than Its Fair Share to Climate Change
www.foodandwine.com
Here's how bartenders are finding environmentally friendly and more sustainable alternatives for garnishing their cocktails.

Interesting take. I am pro-garnish, or pro-presentation might be a better description. We eat with our eyes first, beautiful food tastes better. The rant against both inedible garnishes (a pineapple leaf? Really? It would just be waste if not a garnish) and edible (for unbalancing a drink - but isn’t balance in the eye of the drinker? I don’t squeeze lime into a perfect drink). I’m not sure how much waste there is in commercial kitchens, but probably less than in a home kitchen because waste is cost. In my home kitchen, spent citrus is used to make syrup, pineapple peels to make tepache, other peels often to make kvass, other food waste into the compost if it’s not good for broth or kvass.

I don’t always garnish but do appreciate them, they add beauty and that’s not a waste.

  • chulo_sinhatche@lemmy.world
    51·
    1 year ago

    Any steps toward reducing waste should be applauded, even if it’s a drop in the bucket compared to spent jet/container ship fuel. But the bartenders in this article seem to be missing the forest for the trees here. If you’re so hell bent on reducing waste that you don’t want a lemon wedge on your cocktail glass, but still eat beef multiple times a week for instance (the article doesn’t mention what the bartenders diet choices are, but their restaurant employers serve a meat heavy menu), it seems a little hypocritical.

    • sirfancy@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 year ago

      Yeah agreed. This article is kinda stupid. I like the part about reducing the waste by having the kitchen use the rest of the citrus. But to ban garnishes because someone “might incorrectly garnish with a lime wedge, encouraging to drinker to squeeze it”? Ridiculous. Tell him to garnish with a peel, then give the rest to the kitchen or make a syrup.

      The fact he says he’s “vehemently against garnishes” because he’s so busy sourcing the highest quality ingredients and glassware comes across as so holier-than-thou. Literally the whole point of bartending is to put on a show; it’s very performant. If you aren’t going to make the drink look nice, why not just go ahead and make a batch of cocktails beforehand and dispense each one from a tap? A single sprig of mint or rosemary isn’t extra waste either; it’s there for aromatics, and he should know that olfactory is the vast majority of flavor. It’s not going to waste, it’s being used.