][1]Edinburgh’s Cafe St Honoré and its chef director Neil Forbes has just achieved three star champion status from the Sustainable Restaurant Association.
The SRA sustainability rating recognises restaurants as one, two or three star sustainability champions depending on how they rate against a wide range of criteria covering fourteen areas of sustainability.
Top rated
The scheme has been rolling out across England where there are many hundreds of restaurants already involved, so far however, in Scotland there are only a handful and Cafe St Honoré is the top-rated, achieving an overall score of 80% – an exceptional achievement.
In 2010, Neil, the winner of the Chef of the Year Award at the 2001 Scottish Restaurant Awards, was the first chef in Scotland to pledge to continue to improve his kitchen’s sustainability by becoming the first Scottish member of the SRA.
The award is the culmination of a great deal of hard work by chef director Neil Forbes and his dedicated team.
Neil said: ‘Sustainability is top of my list of priorities at the restaurant; it’s a way of life. However, it’s nothing new as our grandparents’ generation would have been accustomed to preserving resources, growing their own and buying locally. But since the dawn of globalisation we seem to have forgotten the importance and economic benefits of these values. I’m very encouraged that an organisation like the SRA exists to help restaurants and producers make practical changes to the way they do business. It feels great to be able to pass on these messages to the future generation of chefs.’
Sourcing locally
Neil and his small brigade have for some time had a policy of sourcing local, seasonal and sustainable ingredients, developing close relationships with producers and foragers ensuring that diners are given food with clear lines of traceability and ethical integrity.
If you want to know what food from a three SRA restaurant tastes like then 5pm is currently running a £22.50 offer from Cafe St Honoré for three courses and a glass of wine from their cafe classics menu.