Three Days at Silo: My Stage at the World’s First Zero-Waste Restaurant
Published on: May 21, 2025
At Social Pantry, we’re passionate about nurturing our chefs’ growth – offering them opportunities to develop their skills, explore new culinary experiences and expand their horizons through staging.
One chef who’s embraced this opportunity most recently is Arshia, our talented Workplace Sous Chef. In this blog, she shares her personal experience and what the journey has meant to her…
As a chef, few things excite me more than learning from the best – especially when those chefs are redefining how we cook, serve, and think about food. Thanks to Social Pantry, I recently had the opportunity to spend three days staging at Silo, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant.
I’d heard a lot about Silo, their innovation, creativity, and dedication to sustainability, but nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced. This wasn’t just another kitchen! It was a revolutionary space, one that challenged everything I thought I knew about cooking.
The First Glimpse
Walking into Silo, I immediately noticed what wasn’t there: no bins, no blue roll, no piles of cardboard or plastic containers. Instead, everything, from the ceilings to the furniture, was made from recycled materials. There’s even a factory above the restaurant that turns old wine bottles into beautiful glass plates.
Coming from the fast-paced world of catering kitchens, I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing! But over the next three days, I saw just how efficiently and creatively a kitchen can run when waste simply isn’t part of the equation.
Getting Stuck In
The team at Silo welcomed me with open arms. They were generous with their time, knowledge, and trust, letting me jump right into the prep for appetisers and desserts on day one. I quickly saw how nothing is wasted: vegetable trimmings, meat offcuts, sourdough starter… everything has a purpose, a second life.
One of the most exciting moments of the stage was working closely with the Head Chef on Silo’s signature dumplings. After showing me the process, he let me run the dumpling section based on how I’d handled the prep. It was an incredible vote of confidence and one of the highlights of my time there!
Living the Zero-Waste Way
In every culture, there are techniques for preserving food in various ways. I’ve grown up watching my grandmother and mum preserve food, from pickles and jams to sun-dried meats and fish, but the level of detail and intention at Silo was something else. It opened my eyes to how preservation isn’t just practical – it can be transformational in terms of flavour.
At Silo, there are three main preservation techniques at the heart of their cooking:
Amazake
A sweet, fermented Japanese drink made from rice, used in several sauces and desserts, including a stunning house-made ice cream.
Garum
An ancient Roman sauce originally made with fermented fish – now reimagined using meat and vegetable trimmings to season many of Silo’s savoury dishes with deep umami richness.
Koji
A powerful fermenting agent used to create miso, soy sauce, and sake. At Silo, it’s used in all kinds of creative ways, enhancing everything from marinades to dumplings.
Every element is repurposed:
- Veg trimmings become a rich treacle.
- Old vegetables are reborn as kimchis.
- Sourdough starters are used in quavers, miso, and more.
- Bones and offal are transformed into broths, sausages, and stuffings.
It’s not just zero-waste, it’s full-circle, closed-loop flavour.
Giving Back
After three days of learning, I wanted to share something of my own. I cooked one of my signature curries for the Silo team as a thank-you – a little taste of my roots, and a way to give back for everything they’d given me!
The experience didn’t end there. Alongside some of my Social Pantry colleagues, my week at Silo ended on the other side of the counter as a guest, experiencing their seven-course tasting menu. Sitting down to eat, after having worked behind the scenes, was surreal. I could see the techniques and ingredients I’d helped prep transformed into dishes like: Asparagus with Fava Bean Miso, Smoked Pumpkin with Furikake, Koji Porridge with Mushrooms, and, of course, their unforgettable Sourdough Dumplings.
It was one of the most flavour-packed meals I’ve ever had – intense, surprising, and deeply inspiring!
Bringing it Back to Social Pantry
This stage has changed the way I think about food. It’s made me more thoughtful about waste, more excited by preservation, and more committed to the idea that sustainability and creativity can go hand in hand.
At Social Pantry, we already run zero-to-landfill kitchens and design closed-loop menus, but my time at Silo has shown me that there’s always more we can do. More to learn. More to reimagine. I’m excited to get back into the Workplace Kitchen and implement some of the new techniques I’ve learned into the Social Pantry way of working.
It has been a wonderful three days full of learning alongside the most wonderful, supportive team and I’m incredibly proud to be the fifth Social Pantry chef to stage at Silo – following in the footsteps of Lulu (2024), Grace (2023), Amy (2022), and Sarah in 2019.
