Margaret's in Marfa

The Sustainable Menu at Margaret’s at the JW Marriott in the Dallas Arts District | Eater Dallas

"Perched atop the JW Marriott in the Arts District, Margaret’s opened in late July 2023 as a fine-dining rooftop restaurant for travelers and locals that was marketed as elegant, “ranch-to-fork” dining but in practice leans heavily into a much deeper sustainability program. When I sat down with executive chef Jonah Friedmann he described a whole-ingredient approach—hollowing onions to serve onion soup in the onion, dehydrating onion skins and grinding them into onion powder, using whole short loins and turning bones and off-cuts into stocks and braises, and rendering and even dry-aging fat to use for cooking instead of buying butter and oil. Friedmann also emphasized sourcing within roughly an 80-mile radius when possible (while still paying a premium for items like F1 Wagyu from Outpost 76 in Texas) and selecting sustainably raised proteins such as Green Circle Chicken from Amish Pennsylvania, whose birds eat vegetable scraps from a neighboring farm. The kitchen set up composting with Recycle Revolution from pre-opening—color-coded bins (compost is bright red) and station layouts to minimize waste—and is partnering with Urban Dirt to feed that compost into a garden at Vincent’s (Sky Baron rooftop) so herbs, microgreens and other produce can accent plates or be used to infuse sauces, oils and cocktail syrups. Friedmann measures success both by kitchen culture—requiring each chef to justify how a dish will be made sustainable when added to the menu—and by paper metrics: a Recycle Nation audit found JW Marriott recycled 6,806 pounds of compost in 2023, which the report translates to a reduction of 5,989 pounds of CO2." - Courtney E. Smith