April is Earth Month, but for Fariyal Abdullahi, executive chef at Hav & Mar in New York City, it was business as usual. All year long, she runs a zero-waste kitchen at the seafood restaurant, and every team member is challenged to be on board with her sustainability mission.
“I grew up in Ethiopia and I was fortunate to be about one step removed from our food source at all times,” she said. “Every Friday, we would go to the mutton farm and my mother would take an [slaughtered] animal home in the trunk of her car and butcher it into different parts that we’d consume in different dishes all week.”
That zero-waste ethos stayed with Abdullahi throughout culinary school at the CIA, but when it came to work, not every restaurant was as much into sustainability as she was. That is, not until celebrated chef Marcus Samuelsson tapped her to head up the kitchen at his yet unopened Hav & Mar about five years ago. “When Marcus hired me, he made it clear that sustainability was an important part of his vision,” she said.
Abdullahi translates that vision by giving her sous chefs and cooks projects that spark their creativity. “I’ve asked them to think about what they would do with the skin of an onion instead of throwing it away, for example. Can we treat it in a way that becomes edible,” Abdullahi recalls.
That challenge led to a culinary “aha” moment. “We discovered if you char onion skins and then blend them, they turn into this ash powder that has wonderful smoky notes and can be used like a seasoning,” said Abdullahi.
Composting is also key to her sustainability mission, and food waste that doesn’t get repurposed goes into the compost bin. One of her supplier partners, Afterlife Mushrooms, picks up that compost and uses it to grow mushrooms in a circular solution to food waste.
“We buy the mushrooms back from them and create a menu item with them called Nordic Forest Curry, served with a side of coconut rice,” said Abdullahi. “The dish is a conversation starter and we use it to talk about Afterlife Mushrooms and their sustainability story.”
Chef Fariyal Abdullahi plates seafood.
As a seafood restaurant on the East Coast, Hav & Mar also serves a lot of oysters on the shell. Abdullahi participates in the Billion Oyster Project—a New York City-based nonprofit with the goal of restoring one billion oysters to New York Harbor by 2035. The nonprofit collects those empty oyster shells from her restaurant and others in the area, cures them for a year to remove any organic matter, then uses them to restore oyster reefs and seed oysters in the waterways.
Although Abdullahi has long been interested in sustainability, she had to learn about initiatives and find like-minded supplier partners once she came to Hav & Mar. “They didn’t teach me these things in culinary school and there was no real guidebook,” she said.
When it comes to sourcing seafood, she follows the Monterey Bay Aquarium sustainability guidelines, “but we use so many different species of fish on the menu and I don’t have the capacity to go to every fishery and see with my own eyes what they’re doing,” she said. “Having vendors I trust is the best way to make sure. They do the babysitting for me.” The same goes for the meats and produce she sources.
On the menu, branzino is served “nose to tail,” even though some guests are turned off by the head. “The reason I do that is because that’s how I grew up and I want guests to develop a relationship with their food and recognize the protein on the plate,” said Abdullahi.
Hav & Mar’s sustainability mission extends to the kitchen equipment too, even tools as basic as a spatula and colander. The executive chef sources durable items that won’t end up in the landfill in a year and partners with suppliers that align with her goals and ethics, like OXO.
“Sustainability is a lifelong journey, a day-to-day practice that has no finish line,” she stressed. Much more than one month in April.
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