NO ONE smashed a plate, at least not deliberately. But we did get a blast on the old balalaika and blue and white flags on our orange polenta cake.
It was Greek night at the once a month bistro run by Sheffield zero waste enterprise Foodworks at its Sharrow Old School kitchen.
Now me and Greek food have always had an uneasy relationship. It started when I reviewed a Hellenic-themed restaurant for The Star back in the Eighties, the sort of place where you paid to smash crockery and it paid to triple-check your bill afterwards.
I didn’t review it kindly and when they complained my boss told them to go to Ephesus . . . or something like that.
Then when I holidayed in Greece every restaurant seemed to have the same menu and the same stray cats winding themselves around your ankles and filching food from your plate.
We’d flown into Athens on a sweltering night and the one thing we wanted was moussaka. I know … but it’s the sort of thing you do on holiday. It was the quite the worst I have ever eaten.
Only later did I learn that the vast majority of tourist moussakas are made in Romanian factories, frozen and lorried in.
If Odysseus had eaten it the night before he set sail he would have jacked it in and we would never have had the Odyssey.
Now the bistro night, like most of the others, is masterminded by Gabriela, Foodworks’ senior chef hubs manager. Gabriela is from Romania so I thought it best to keep quiet about the moussaka.
Moussaka isn’t even on the menu and Gabby has not provided even one stray cat but we have blue and white napkins and paper flags, plus plenty of olives to get us in the mood.
Foodworks finds a home for surplus food from the major supermarkets and other businesses and turns it into fresh and frozen meals at its kitchens cum cafes in Sharrow and Upperthorpe.
Then there’s its warehouse where more food is saved from waste and a farm which supplies fruit, vegetables and herbs for the busy kitchens.
Just to give you some idea Foodworks served up 6,726 lunches from January to June and thats not counting frozen meals. Altogether some 500 tonnes of food is saved from landfill.
Gabriela had the pick of the warehouse once she had chosen the night’s theme so we started, how else?, with pitta, olives, dips and stuffed vegetables, followed by sea bass with lemon potatoes and ended up with a traditional orange polenta cake.
It was lovely stuff for the 44 of us sitting down to eat and I didn’t see much left. Who would have dared after hearing Foodworks ‘ CEO Rene Meijer tell us it was “gobsmackingly bananas” that food was going to waste in a time of climate change.
As he put it, and who would want to argue, just by sitting down and tucking in we were making a difference.
Of course, food is no good unless it is prepared well and that is down to the efforts of Gabriela and her fellow professional chefs Simon and Jonathan with volunteer cooks Jean, Kath and Phil and servers Jan, Sue and Rachel.
So why not pop along to the next bistro in November and do your bit to make a difference?
DISCLAIMER: I’m not entirely unbiased since I do a regular kitchen shift at Sharrow and was Gabriela’s guest on the night. But this was good value in anybody”s money.
You can find out more at http://www.thefoodworks.org
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