A New Restaurant in Berlin Sells Food No One Wants

12/27/2016

A new restaurant in Berlin sells food no one wants. Completely Happy (Restlos Glücklich) is all about reducing food waste. As a report on Huffington Post points out, the not-for-profit eatery, which opened in Berlin, Germany, in May, hosts workshops to teach people how to waste less food at home and creates a menu in which 70 percent to 80 percent of the ingredients used are donations from wholesalers and supermarkets that don’t want the items on their shelves. It’s safe but might not be pretty or as fresh, or might be close to the expiration date. The topline is that shoppers would pass them by.

Completely Happy’s chefs regularly change up the menu based on produce they get from their partners, like foamy beet soup with ginger crème fraîche cheese,or fried tempeh with stone mushrooms and Jerusalem artichoke gratin, or a wild-herb salad with baked camembert on wheat semolina.

Food waste is a global problem and in Germany, people who live there toss more than 24 million pounds of food per year. Completely Happy wants to teach people how to curb the waste. The restaurant has a Creative Cooking Class that shows folks how to make use of all the items in their fridge, and it wants to teach people to start believing in their own senses again: According to the company, “If you see a carrot and it’s fine, eat it, and if it’s a little old, just make soup out of it.”

Completely Happy is open for dinners Wednesday through Saturday, making the space available for workshops the rest of the week.

Related Topics