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but also create dishes with unique ingredients and flavor profiles. Satterfield says his latest challenge has been finding a way to utilize carrot tops. "It's actually a great financial move," he says of using the whole vegetable. "You're buying these products and you're pay- ing by the pound or by the bunch, but it's part of your purchase, so if you just toss it to the side, it greatly increases the cost of your carrot." If you use the carrot tops in some way, he explains, you're able to extend the purchase and make more money off of it. Additionally, Miller Union serves family meals to its staff twice a day, and Satterfield makes sure those dishes are filled with the food the restaurant has in surplus or that can no longer be served to din- ers. Scraps, uneaten food from diners' plates, and other foods that can't be utilized are sent off with a large hauler to a local compost site. Moreover, Satterfield says analyzing the restaurant's garbage helps employees see what they're doing right and where there might be room for improvement. "Have a team [effort] where you just pull everything out of the garbage and talk about what you could do dif- ferently," he says. Waste is constantly on Satterfield's brain, but he often has to remind his employees to be present and mindful about the choices they make. "It's a daily uphill battle," he says. "American culture is all about excess and getting anything you want anytime you want it. It's just hard to teach people to think differently about it." In acknowledgement of the food waste problem, Blue Hill chef Dan Barber transformed his New York City restaurant into a pop- up called WastED, in which he worked with celebrity chefs, local farmers, fishermen, and suppliers to highlight new and inventive ways to utilize foods others might consider waste. Dishes consisted of juice pulp cheeseburgers, bruised bok choy, fennel and apple peel- ings, remnants of pasta noodles, and the water drained from cans of chickpeas. He is also taking this project to the rooftop space of Selfridges in London in the spring of 2017. At 21 Greenpoint in Brooklyn, chef Sean Telo serves an ever- changing tasting menu every Sunday that is made using scraps from the previous week. The restaurant also serves crudités made with "ugly fruit," as well as a pesto sauce that contains parsley stems. Miller Union's Satterfield has found a unique use for kale stems, which are sliced very thinly, sautéed until tender, then pureed in a food processor to be folded into cracker dough. Those kale stem crackers are served up nightly with a chicken liver mousse dish that also features a jelly made from apple cores, seeds, and skin scraps. Working on Large-Scale Waste Solutions Excess is something Yalmaz Siddiqui, vice president of corporate sustainability at MGM Resorts International, knows well. The company has been tackling food waste at its Las Vegas properties through compost recycling since 2008. After the compost facility the company used went under in 2014, MGM moved to a diversion program where its organic waste is sent to a pig farm outside the city. At MGM, about 40 percent of the total food waste is from leftovers on guests' plates, 30 percent is food that is prepared but not served, and the remaining portion is inedible kitchen scraps. The company is working on making moves to lessen its waste even further. "I don't think we can do much with the kitchen scraps, apart from the pig farm or compost," Siddiqui explains. "We try to maximize what we can get out of produce, of course." A better opportunity, he says, is in the food that is prepared but not served and also the leftovers on guest plates. "As we get to under- Regardless of the size of the operation, MGM Resorts International's Yalmaz Siddiqui believes part of the solution is finding ways to stop the waste at the source instead of expending energy trying to figure out what to do with it once it's been produced. Some chefs serve tasting menus or staff family meals made of food scraps. 34 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com