How to Build a Plastic-Free Kitchen
An interview with Chef Ed Lee, who successfully did just that and wants to help you do it, too.
The super-acclaimed chef, Ed Lee, owner of multiple restaurants in Louisville and Washington, DC, founder of the non-profit the Lee Initiative, break out star of the Korean cooking competition show Culinary Class Wars, and author, just added a new title to his very long and impressive — the owner of a completely plastic-free restaurant.
Lee recently opened Shia, a beautiful, upscale Korean spot in the nation’s capital, where his kitchen is fully free of single-use plastic — including sharpies. Plastic, especially single-use plastic is at the center of nearly every conversation about climate and health these days, and restaurants in the US “use approximately 1 trillion pieces of single-use plastic packaging and food service ware annually.”
It’s a huge problem to scale and one that isn’t easy. “It’s a lot of inconvenience and a little bit of discomfort initially, but then once you get used to it, it just becomes your normal,” says Lee of the experience of going plastic-free.
Lee was recently in Los Angeles, and I sat down with him over a gigantic crispy cutlet and bowl of chilled buckwheat noodles at Lasung House in Koreatown, to catch-up and talk about what going plastic-free really means, the challenges and benefits, and how other people and restaurants can also reduce their use of plastic, too.
What made you decide to go fully plastic-free in the first place?
This was something that has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time — how much plastic a restaurant goes through. Do you remember the video where there was like a straw that got stuck in a turtle's nose? And it went viral. Because of that, we started banning plastic straws all across the country.
I just remember there was this feeling of like, oh, we ditched our plastic straws at the bar and we're all going to pat ourselves on the back. Right. Have you seen a kitchen and how much plastic we go through in the kitchen? Like straws are the least of our problems. That's the drop in the bucket. It sparked a fire in me.
I was like, okay, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it for real and not half-ass it. I want to do a restaurant that can prove that you can go zero gas, zero plastic, waste reduction, do all these things, but still do a good restaurant with good food.
Were you shocked at just how much plastic is used in a kitchen?
Yes. So one of the things that we're doing, because the restaurant is a non-profit, is collecting data and research. And then we're going to publish an annual paper on it. That's going to be basically a blueprint of how you also can go non-zero plastic.
So we've identified somewhere between 30 and 40 points of plastic in a restaurant. And then we will offer that, the substitute, the cost analysis, and the pros and cons of each item. So that it's going to be a long document, but at the end of the day, if you wanted to try this, you could do it yourself by using this document as a blueprint.
So we have identified everything from the biggest things, deli containers, cling wrap, gloves.
What are some limitations when it comes to cooking styles and techniques by going plastic free?
You know, honestly, sous vide is a big thing with all the plastic, so we don't sous vide anything. But then we go down to little things like disposable pens. Anything that's single use. There's so many packaging things that come in plastic.
Another big one is squeeze bottles. That was a hard one. Every restaurant that I've ever worked in has used multitudes of squeeze bottles. Especially for sauces, plating, right? So all of those things we go through.
Not using plastic means we also can't use silicone molds. It makes pastry work a real challenge. So instead of like trying to do something that mimics that, we just learn to lean into it. So like all of a sudden, all our food looks very organic. Everything's plated with a spoon.
We use cling wrap a lot in restaurants. What we've learned to do is instead of turning meat into a sausage roll, which requires a lot of cling wrap, we do it in a hand rolled meatball instead. Or there's this thing where you take an egg yolk and put it in plastic and then you shape it into a ball and then you kind of like dip it in water, and It’s cutesy, but we're just like we'll just poach the fucking egg like the way they've been doing it for 300 years — plastic free.
There's no dots. It's so weird that our plating looks so old fashioned. But in doing that, it also feels very modern. Because it's just so different.
It sounds like you’re finding inspiration for the future in the past.
Half our mentality is to go backwards in time because restaurants existed before plastic. Even in my career, which is now almost 30 years old, there was always plastic but there was less plastic than there is now.
Like, I'm not anti-plastic but I am anti-this easy reliance on so much plastic. We just wanted to make a statement. Do you really need that much plastic in your kitchen? It's just not healthy. It's not healthy for the environment. It's not healthy for the consumer. We all know that plastic leeches out chemicals.
You use that squeeze bottle over and over. No one's checking that squeeze bottle to say, “that’s three weeks old, let’s get a new one.” It just goes on and on and sauces are being stored in those bottles, especially the hot stuff.
What was the hardest thing to get rid of?
On opening day, I pulled out a Sharpie, you know, because we all use Sharpies. Of course. I pulled out a Sharpie to mark something, and I was like, fuck, that's a single use plastic.
So we got rid of Sharpies, you know. And that was honestly, people were like, what's the hardest thing? Getting rid of my Sharpie was the hardest thing.
So what's the alternative to the Sharpie?
There are Sharpies where you can refill ink. But there's also, you know, pencils, crayons. I mean, there are things that you can write that aren't marker, but that write. So we offer those things.
So you got rid of the sharpies and the squeeze bottles — what about are you using for storage instead of Cambros?
So we just use We use stainless steel and have ceramic containers. We use glass containers Instead of the plastic deli containers. They’re more expensive, but now it's like, oh wait a second they look pretty, So now we can display them on our shelves.
What we realize is It's not a one-to-one trade-off. Once you get rid of something, it's not just finding an alternative and plugging it in. It’s questioning your systems. Maybe we don't need to create so much sauce that we need so many storage containers? What about just making it from scratch as we need it and then we don't even need the storage container?
How has your staff reacted to the plastic-free kitchen?
They didn't sign up for this — they just signed up for a job. After two, three weeks of working here, they go, with out me asking, “you know, I think I can go home and change some of the plastic things in my house after seeing what we do here.” And I don't ask them to do that, but I also feel like once you see this, once you realize that there's no plastic, It is contagious.
How do you control the plastic that comes from suppliers?
There's still a lot of plastic that recycles into our kitchen, because we can't control what gets delivered in plastic or not. So this is a five-year project. Year one is to get rid of the plastic within the four walls of our restaurant. Year two: We've already started implementing Year two is we're going to start tackling the supply chain. But by year two, which will be in November, we're going to start to figure out ways to reduce plastics in the supply chain. If I can even reduce the plastic that comes through our doors from suppliers, it’s massive.
How costly was it to go plastic-free?
It's a 24 seat restaurant and I think it's going to cost $20,000 to $25,000 to go fully plastic-free, and that's a significant amount of money. But I want to prove to you that you can offset that by raising your prices. Advertise that you are disposable plastic-free and you will get more customers. You could even attract a whole subset of customers that maybe wouldn't have even gone to your restaurant because they heard you were plastic-free. People feel relief, I think. We're going to test out the hypothesis.
I think we can build momentum on it. We already started talking to a chef in San Francisco and he's already started talking about how he wants to do the same. So perhaps we can start to build a coalition of restaurants that work together, to share information, to create this thing that is nationwide?
It would be amazing to see more kitchens going plastic-free in the near future.
I also want to emphasize that it's not that you have to be 100% plastic free as a restaurant, either. I always say, if I convince 5 other restaurants to go 0% plastic, I’ve failed. But if I can convince 10,000 restaurants to reduce their plastic use by 15%, that’s a huge success overall in terms of volume. I don't want to sit here and go look at how cool I am by doing this. I really want to create a new ecosystem. And this paper that we do, we’re going to make it available for free to download in November.
I'm going to put in the work and the effort to show you how we did it and I'm going to test some things for everybody — because the thing is It does cost a lot of money to figure out. Then you can take the shortcut and go, oh don't do this, do that, don't use bamboo cutting boards because they warp in three weeks.
We're trying to offer real solutions, practical solutions, for other restaurateurs. This is not just for Michelin star places. I want restaurants in Oklahoma to do this, your neighborhood Italian restaurant, your neighborhood cafe. That's where the real impact is.
We’ve built this system over the years where everything is disposable. Culture has become disposable. And I don't know, it’s like all of a sudden when I have a pan or a glass container, it’s permanent. Like no, we're not going to throw this away — and it does something to your psyche. When you are surrounded by plastic everyday, the world feels disposable. And when all of a sudden You have things around you that are permanent that are heavy duty, that are quality made, that are expensive, all of a sudden, when I grab that glass container I'm not grabbing it with an absent mind because I know if I don't focus on it It slips, and it’s not just a container. I'm losing It's like 30 minutes of cleaning up glass the has shattered all over the place.
What has been a surprisingly cool or positive outcome that you've come across in this process?
The food is just fresher. We're doing things a bit more a la minute because we don't want to have a lot of storage containers. Therefore, we can't pre-make a lot of stuff. We’re sacrificing some aesthetics for something that's fresher, that to me feels and tastes more alive.
Everyone puts a vinaigrette In a squeeze bottle, and the reason it works in a squeeze bottle is because vinaigrettes separate, so it's really easy to shake it. And so what we do then is we go okay how about we just make the vinaigrette from scratch instead each time we need it?
And then you're like, “wow this vinaigrette is alive!” It's fresher and punchier. Every kitchen person In the world will know this — how long has your vinaigrette been sitting In that squeeze bottle? 2 hours? 4 hours? 6 hours? 2 days? Because it was made 30 seconds ago, it tastes so fresh and even though it takes a little more work it is worth it.
If you’re interested in more pieces on climate, food systems, and food waste:
Maybe Eggs Should Have Been a Luxury Food All Along
Your Carrot Top Pesto Will Not Save the World
Wow, when they say plastic-free they REALLY mean plastic-free — even Sharpies! That particular detail really stuck out to me because it would never have occurred to me to think of that as being a single-use plastic kitchen utensil... but of course, it is.
And yet Sharpies have only been around since, what, the 60's? So of course there had to have been alternatives prior to that; thinking about this brought back memories of drawing pictures using the stubs of black grease pencils in my grandfather's workshop.
Love the vision of disseminating the info and outcomes, and aiming for a broad influence on reduced plastics in the industry rather than a goal of unattainable purity in places out of reach to folks most at risk of adverse consequences of environmental plastic degradation.