In the run-up to WWF’s Earth Hour on 28th March, four 50 Best chefs and restaurateurs are leading a movement of cooks giving up all electricity at their restaurants for one night to raise awareness about climate change. Discover what the Blackout Dinners are and how Matt Orlando, Billy Wagner, Micha Schäfer and Mehmet Gürs plan to make the initiative as delicious as it is sustainable
It all started with a power cut. Chef Matt Orlando was in the middle of a busy dinner service at his restaurant Amass in Copenhagen, Denmark – No.85 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2019 – when the lights went out. “It was a massive blackout. I walked around every table telling people ‘this is not what you paid for, so we can rebook a table for you – or, if you want, you can stay and we’ll try to cook as much as we can’,” recalls Orlando. “I expected at least half of the tables to leave. Then only one left. And I was like ‘oh, sh*t!’.”
What followed was a “crazy service” during which the Amass team rallied together to give their diners the best experience they could. Barbecues were lit, candles were handed out and the wild duck the restaurant had planned to cook sous vide had to be thrown on the grill – resulting in an unexpected outcome. “The flavour that came out of that was just so superior to cooking duck in a sous vide bag,” says Orlando. “It actually pushed us to stop cooking sous vide all together.”
Orlando’s positive impressions of the spontaneous blackout dinner were proven right when, a few days later, customers’ letters started coming in. “People were telling us it was one of the best dining experiences they ever had and that they would never forget it,” he continues. “So we said, okay, let’s try do it on purpose. Ironically, it was around Earth Hour, so it’s almost like it was all meant to be.”
From that first delicious discovery in 2016, the Blackout Dinners have grown into a movement that encourages restaurants everywhere to give up electricity for one night to explore the role it plays in dining and what it means to do without it. This year, there are Blackout Dinners taking place at eight restaurants across Europe, in cities such as Berlin, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Istanbul, Tirana, Vienna and Zurich. Just like during Earth Hour, restaurants are going dark to show how electricity is too often taken for granted.
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One of the first restaurants to get involved was Nobelhart & Schmutzig in Berlin, Germany, No.57 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2019, which has been instrumental in the movement going international. This year will mark the second time the restaurant is hosting a Blackout Dinner, an experience that owner Billy Wagner and chef Micha Schäfer say they have found enriching.
“We love to question they way we work,” they say. “Not using electricity seems simple, but that’s why it’s interesting – you have to cook with a different approach. If you cook with fire, you don’t want everything to taste like smoke, so the approach requires a lot more attention to detail, as fire is changing all the time.”
Among the chefs that Schäfer and Wagner contacted was also Mehmet Gürs of Mikla in Istanbul, Turkey (No.52 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2019). This will be Gürs’ first experience hosting a Blackout Dinner. “There are a few things we can do to reduce the impact we have on the environment as a restaurant and as an industry,” he says. “One is to personally reduce our footprint, and another is to spread the same effort to the restaurants, producers and consumers around us. The Blackout Dinner is one of the ways we can do this.”
Gürs is experienced cooking with fire – it’s the main cooking technique at Mürver, Mikla’s sister restaurant, where the chef even hosted Nobelhart & Schmutzig’s Schäfer for a kitchen stage in preparation for the next Blackout Dinner. He mentions that there is also a lot of drying, pickling and fermenting taking place in the Mikla kitchen – all techniques that don’t require electricity.
Nobelhart & Schmutzig’s dish 'Celeriac, majoram' (image: Marko Seifert)
The Blackout Dinners’ ethos goes beyond the walls of the restaurant, expanding to sourcing. Participating restaurants are encouraged to assess the electrical footprint of the products they cook with, finding butchers who work in artisanal ways and vegetables that aren’t grown in greenhouses. The dining experience is also affected, as lights and sound systems are turned off for the night.
Since the first accidental Blackout Dinner, Orlando and his team have created a structure that works at a fine dining level. A Blackout Dinner at Amass now doesn’t only raise awareness about climate change, but it also features candlelight at every table, live acoustic music in the dining room and dishes cooked using different methods than what you may find in the standard dining experience. “Cooking without electricity really shows you that all this modern technology we have, although it’s amazing, isn't always the best way to go if you're looking for the best possible flavour,” says the chef.
“People have such a strong perceived notion of what a restaurant should be. Then, when you take a factor out of that equation, it changes the experience completely,” says Orlando. The Blackout Dinners also draw attention to another factor that is now considered almost fundamental to dining – the ability to take photos of the food and document the experience. Given that phones and cameras are powered by electricity, the tech is banned from any Blackout Dinner – instead, Orlando hires an artist to draw and illustrate snapshots of the evening.
Amass' exterior
The chef recalls that before one of the first ‘official’ Blackout Dinners, the restaurant received an angry call by a food blogger complaining that he couldn’t bring his camera. After he decided to take part in the dinner anyway, he reached out to the chef to describe his experience. “He said that it was the first time in five years that he just sat and had a three-hour conversation with his wife over dinner, because they are normally so used to being on their phones,” recalls Orlando. “That showed me that maybe the Blackout Dinners are also about people reconnecting over a meal and not being so distracted by all the stuff that happens around us every day.”
The chef sees the Blackout Dinners as “the responsible thing to do” in the context of how the restaurant industry is impacting the environment. He hopes to be able to expand the initiative to involve more and more restaurants in the future, with plans to go global. “The restaurant industry as a whole is really unsustainable. If we don't change what we're doing, 20 years from now we're not going to have all the ingredients that we're so lucky to cook with.
“If we, in the little microcosm of the restaurant industry, can have some effect in inspiring people, that’s what is important – to make people aware and show them that you don't have to compromise quality to work this way. The restaurant industry needs to stop being so afraid of change, because we're all going to have to change if we want to keep cooking like we're cooking.”
Limited spaces are still available for some of the 2020 Blackout Dinners, which are taking place in March. Discover all the restaurants taking part and how to reserve on blackoutdinner.com
50 Best is committed to rewarding restaurants and bars that marry outstanding food and drinks with a responsible ethos through its Sustainable Restaurant and Bar Award series. The venues in each edition of the 50 Best lists are invited to take part in the award via self-nomination. The winner is selected by Food Made Good Global through an audit system that rewards the restaurant or bar with the highest environmental and social responsibility rating.
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