How Restaurant Olivia Reduces Waste and Compost in Denver

"A pasta-focused, Michelin Guide–recommended restaurant in Denver’s Washington Park neighborhood, opened by Austin Carson, Heather Morrison and chef Ty Leon just seven weeks before the pandemic, it pairs premium cooking with an ambitious sustainability program. From the start they moved beyond recycling to composting and embracing the principle of “refuse,” which led them to remove their once-popular lobster spaghetti (it arrived in styrofoam and carried a high carbon footprint). They hired sustainability director Paula Thomas—an experienced pastry chef with work at Slow Food International and a master’s in World Food Cultures—to formalize supplier relationships (using Seafood Watch and sourcing grain from the Rye Resurgency Project) and to introduce creative waste-to-ingredient practices: fermenting spent lemons and kabocha skins into misos and vinegars, turning rhubarb and ginger trimmings into kombucha, and pressing fibrous pea shells into wildflower seed–embedded papers given to diners. Those efforts reduce composting costs and let the kitchen justify more environmentally responsible indulgences—fair-trade vanilla, sugar and chocolate—while the owners continue to wrestle with the economic balancing act of paying staff fairly and keeping the business viable as they plan a sister restaurant, Emilia." - Cynthia Barnes