Blue Hill is a restaurant that has been at the top of my list for a while but I never quite got around to making a reservation… That is until it was announced that Blue Hill would be hosting a food waste pop up for the last two weeks of March. I knew that I needed to make a reservation as soon as they were available.

What is WastED?

Bull Hill’s WastED is focused around how to reuse food waste. As per the WastedNY website, “WastED will collaborate with local farmers, fishermen, distributors, processors, plant breeders, producers, restaurants and retailers, reconceiving “waste” that occurs at every link in the food chain.” WastED is featuring a different guest chef each night of the two weeks, including Mario Batali, Danny Bowien, April Bloomfield and Sean Brock. On the night I went to WastED Alex Raij was the guest chef. The guest chef of the evening invents one special for the night, so with Alex Raij as the chef I knew I was in for something with a little bit of Japanese flair.

Everything from the décor, inside of Blue Hill, to the table settings to the drinks are influenced by the theme of reducing food waste. The Blue Hill dining room was transformed, the walls were lined with reemay inside which is a cloth used to cover plants in the cold to keep them warm. Instead of a tradition candle we had a candle made from beef tallow and a celery heart in water in place of flowers. That same candle served as dipping for our bread, our servers poured the melted tallow into a saucer with salt pepper and rosemary, delicious and meaty!

One of my favorite dishes from the night was the Alex Raij special that night. She prepared pork skin noodles with ruby shrimp, Iberico-Choricero pepper XO sauce and potato-skin dashi. I’ve heard of chefs making pork skin noodles before and I was thrilled to get to try the noodles there.

Dumpster Diving at Blue Hill

The dumpster diver salad is also a simple dish but it stood out to me as one of my favorite dishes of the night. The dish will change night to night depending on what veggies they get to add to the salad but mine had fennel and carrot. The pistachios that come with the salad add great texture.

Although its name may scare you away, you have to try their “dog food.” This meatloaf is made with underutilized cuts of beef, it is topped with rich gravy and light graded potato. The server informed me that the meatloaf was even created based off of an actual dog food recipe, if it is good enough for my Cocker Spaniel; it’s good enough for me!

Get WastED at Blue Hill before its too late

Healthy Eater, Julie, and I are planning on heading back to the Blue Hill pop-up on their last night when one of my biggest chef crushes, Sean Brock, will be cooking. The pop-up will be open until March 31^st but they are walk in only after 9pm so head to Blue Hill if you are looking to try something new late night! There is also talk that WastED might become its own restaurant, we’ll be sure to update you if that happens!

For more information on Blue Hill check out their website