Elite Traveler Summer 2021

SILO Silo is a restaurant that took a while to find its spiritual home. After first opening in the British seaside destination of Brighton in 2015, the restaurant’s chef Douglas McMaster decided that the city wasn’t quite ready for his restaurant and its philosophy so, in 2019, it was moved to a new site in London’s übercool borough of Hackney. Silo’s philosophy isn’t necessarily groundbreaking: McMaster runs his restaurant with the straightforward notion that sustainability is non-negotiable. In order to achieve its sustainability goals, Silo is committed to having zero waste, and works directly with farmers and suppliers to ensure that it can make use of every ingredient. Part of this principle includes a ‘nose to tail’ ideology, which strives to maximize every part of an animal (even the bits that other restaurants might discard). Everything possible is done within the restaurant, both to preserve ingredient integrity and minimize transport emissions. Wheat is turned into flour in an in-house flour mill; butter is churned in the kitchens; and the on-site brewery creates natural fermented drinks. Even the food scraps (which are few and far between) are composted on site. As a result, the menu offers some somewhat unusual concepts that you’re unlikely to find elsewhere — for example, ‘meta dairy’ and ‘egg yolk fudge.’ Fortunately, Silo is aware that not all its guests will be familiar with such ingredients, and employs a team of meticulously trained and exceptionally informative servers to do some gentle hand-holding as diners navigate the menu.

Silo ‘All In’ menu from $70 per person. Contact reservations@silolondon.com, +44 207 993 8155, silolondon.com BLUE HILL AT STONE BARNS

Since opening in 2004, Blue Hill at Stone Barns has been more than just a restaurant. Set within the nonprofit Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture 80-acre farm estate in Westchester County, New York, Blue Hill at Stone Barns is renowned for its impressively enormous multicourse menus — sometimes up to 40 courses — that unwaveringly champion a farm-to-table ideology. Led by chef Dan Barber, Blue Hill at Stone Barns (along with its elder sibling in New York City) is on a mission to adapt how we think about food and agriculture every day, and to familiarize diners with a more sustainable path to sourcing and cooking ingredients. This might involve reimagining ingredients that would otherwise be discarded or promoting greater accountability in ingredients’ origins. Barber is also keen on experimenting with more eco-conscious cooking methods. For example, using the heat expelled by composting vegetables to cook with. However, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, Blue Hill at Stone Barns has changed its tack. Now, instead of acting as a restaurant in the conventional sense, it will host a series of Chef in Residence experiences, with the first season of the program underway. Developed in partnership with the Stone Barns Center, the program will see four visiting chefs take over the Blue Hill kitchen to deliver a culinary experience that is an interpretation of the Blue Hill ethos through the lens of their own lives and careers. While the Chef in Residence at Stone Barns program will replace the restaurant concept for now, it will open

SAINT PETER The fishing industry has faced serious scrutiny over its environmental impact recently. Sydney’s Saint Peter restaurant, however, is here to back a sustainable approach to procuring, serving and enjoying seafood. While many dining outlets are guilty of only working with the prime fillets of a fish, Saint Peter’s owner-chef Josh Niland is pioneering whole-fish cookery which, as you might imagine, is the process of utilizing a fish in its entirety. The restaurant purchases each fish whole from a trusted fisherman and prepares it in its nearby purpose-built fish butchery to ensure no part of the animal is wasted, meaning that ingredients that other chefs may discard, such as offal, are featured on Saint Peter’s menus. Each fish is handled carefully and served simply so its distinct flavors can shine. This level of care and detail extends to each ingredient the restaurant serves, from the thoughtful vegetable preparation to the carefully chosen selection of Australian wines. In the interest of both traceability and transparency, Saint Peter’s menu also specifies the supplier of each ingredient, from fish to cheese. During Covid-19 closures, chef Niland offered an at-home menu from his second restaurant. Now that Saint Peter is open once again, it has reimagined its already compact dining room to offer a single side-by-side countertop dining setup, with chefs on one side and guests on the other. Although this excitingly positions diners right in the heart of the kitchen action, be warned that this comes at the cost of a coveted seat at Saint Peter being even harder to come by. Daily set menu from $120 per person. Contact hello@ saintpeter.com.au, +61 289 372 530, saintpeter.com.au

for special holidays throughout the year, and guests can still book for private events. Chef in Residence at Stone Barns experiences from $230 per person. Contact reservations@bluehillfarm.com, +1 914 366 9600, bluehillfarm.com

Photos Cristian Daniel Tam, Clare Lewington, Matt Russell, Alice Gao