Why mess with a good thing? “Because I’m stupid,” says Joost Bakker, the Dutch-born, Australia-raised artist. The good thing he is messing with is Silo, his incredibly successful zero-waste café in Melbourne.
Opened in 2012, Silo made waves when it was announced as an eatery without trashcans. All organic waste would be thrown in the dehydrator in the back, and then composted into nutrient-rich soil. All food would be delivered in returnable crates, all liquids in reusable kegs and all food would be made on site. But two years later, still making a buzz, Bakker decided to close down Silo and reopen it as Brothl. The zero-waste, no trashcan rule is still in effect, but Brothl takes it one step further, using food waste from other restaurants to make its signature dish: broth.
Of course, Bakker is joking about his aforementioned stupidity in closing Silo. What he was doing was being adventurous and curious and challenging – traits that have been the hallmark of his career. Bakker was born in Rustenburg, Holland and moved to Australia with his family when he was nine. Initially working on his family’s tulip farm, his creative spirit meant he was soon in demand for his innovative floral installations that used recyclable materials. He entered the hospitality sector “completely by accident,” and it was only when he began working for restaurant clients on installations and furniture, that he realized how much waste was created in the industry. ‘I could never get anyone to commit to [the cause] as much as I wanted them to, so I thought, bugger it. If no one is going to do it, I’ll do it myself.” First came Greenhouse, a café made from fully recyclable materials with a roof garden terrace supplying vegetables to the restaurant, then came Silo, and now, Brothl.
Each is a step up from the other, a challenge that Bakker sets himself. He toyed with the idea of opening Brothl on a different site but he decided that part of the message was upcycling his green idea into an even greener one. “We achieved what we wanted to with Silo,” he explains. “I mean it is brilliant in every way, but now Brothl takes the idea to a whole other level.”
On Brothl’s menu are a choice of five broths – chicken, meat, fish, vegetable and fruit. The latter is made from fruit rinds as part of their breakfast broth offering and includes freshly rolled oats. The meat and fish broths come from off-cuts and carcasses that Bakker carefully selects from high-quality restaurants in Melbourne, which would otherwise be thrown out. Diners can then add an array of different toppings to their broth – from housemade soba noodles to poached chicken and day old fried bread. “Brothl shows that even the stuff that you think is waste, isn’t. It’s actually the most nutrient dense part, we just need to unlock it,” he says. “It is something of value. And in primitive times, broth was our medicine, it was what resurrected us, it was our nourishment.”
Bakker speaks a lot about primitive methods, materials and techniques. He is the first to say that what he is doing isn’t new but is actually thousands of years old. Many of Silo’s practices, such as fermenting rice before cooking and stone milling flour before baking breads, have carried through to Brothl, creating a continuous connection to methods that have been in place for generations. “When we live, we don’t necessarily need to have an impact on the planet,” insists Bakker. “I’m not the sort of person who says we consume too much or we need to stop living how we are living. No. I think we can have amazing lives and do it in a sustainable way. My projects look very modern, but they use very old ideas.” Reusable milk bottles and the idea of a milkman may seem antiquated but Bakker says this saves a busy café from throwing out 80,000-100,000 plastic bottles a year.
Bakker is optimistic about the future of food. In 2008, when he began work on Greenhouse he was shocked that others weren’t following suit. But since installing his dehydrating/composting system in Silo in 2012, there are now 100 machines throughout Melbourne, and although Silo has metamorphosed into Brothl, the legacy lives on. There is now an independently-run Silo cafe in Brighton, England and even René Redzepi, the Danish chef behind the world renown Noma, has found inspiration in Bakker’s experiments and has now installed a closed loop system in his restaurant. Perhaps, in the near future, diners who travel the world for Redzepi’s food will be dining on food waste garnished with foraged moss and freshly picked chervil.
For Bakker, the food is just as important as the concept. Sustainability may be his mantra, but art is his method. Bakker jokes about being stupid, but this man is no fool. “If it doesn’t look appealing then you’ve lost already. If it’s not cool, if it’s not beautiful and if it doesn’t taste good, you are doomed to fail.”
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