The Osprey At 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge reinvents sustainable luxury cuisine

To The osprey at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridgethe American cuisine restaurant offers guests the luxury of fine dining with the comfort of knowing their meal is crafted with sustainability in mind.

The restaurant is located along the East River waterfront in Dumbo, Brooklyn, offering stunning views of the Manhattan skyline, Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. There, The Osprey hosts the occasional zero-waste dinner series called A Supper That Sustains Us. One of the latest hosted performances featured acclaimed producer Chris Lake, who is also a global Oceanic ambassador, as a speaker for the World Oceans Month.

Here, Denevin Miranda, Executive Chef of 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, and Steven Minor, General Manager of Beverages at 1 Hotels, explain how sustainability is integrated into the restaurant, how they select suppliers to be part of the farm-to-table menu , the importance of local ingredients and more.

Lisa Kocay: What was the motivation behind the sustainability aspect?

Denevin Miranda: “The Osprey embodies the defining factors of 1 Hotels: luxury, hospitality and sustainability. What makes 1 Hotels so interesting and important is that it lives at the intersection of luxury experiences and a deep connection with nature. At The Osprey, we source the best local and sustainable ingredients possible, from the best partners and vendors, to create unique dining experiences for our customers.

“We are driven to pay homage to the beauty of these unmanipulated ingredients and design our dishes in a way that will inspire others. In addition, sustainable foods are the most delicious: they are fresh and local, grown with care and combined in creative ways. »

Kocay: Is the whole food and beverage menu sustainable or is it just heavily focused on it?

Miranda: “Every drink and every dish has a lasting aspect to its story. Sustainability is the lens through which we approach our menu – it is at the forefront of every step that comes before and after presenting a dish. We pay close attention to how we source ingredients, how we use them and how we dispose of waste.

“On our menu, we note options that have a unique sustainability story with ‘SC’ (Sustainable Choice) to highlight exceptional creations from our sustainable initiatives and partnerships. Our cocktail menu indicates which alcoholic beverages have been purchased within 100 miles of us.For our menu, we are fortunate to have the bounty of the tri-state area around us and source from several local farms within a 200 mile radius, some including farms on the rooftops of the city.During the winter, we usually adapt to the national culture at a minimum, because we depend on the season.

Kocay: Can you explain how sustainability is integrated into The Osprey’s food menu?

Miranda: “Zero waste is an important component of our menu. We source ingredients locally that are at peak maturity to preserve nutrients, then find ways to use them in their entirety before they are composted or sent to a digester. We always try to give ingredients a second life, whether we use leftovers in our innovative cocktails or all of our meat, which is minimally processed, including animal bones to make sauces.

“For example, our local oyster dish incorporates all parts of a watermelon. The juice is used to make spicy watermelon air, while the rind and flesh make a reseda, so nothing goes to waste.

“Our signature dish, Hen of the Woods, features a Maitake mushroom that we source from Peat, a zero-waste agricultural company. The whole mushroom is served and accompanied by a vegan aioli with mashed shishito, using whole peppers. The minimal trash or trash we produce goes back to Peat’s mushroom farm to be composted and is then used to make the logs that the mushrooms grow on. We source from them again, and so on, creating a complete dish.

Kocay: And the drinks menu?

Steven Minor: “We approach our cocktail program with a two-pronged strategy. First, we align with partners who use sustainable practices in their production methods, then we incorporate techniques in-house that minimize waste and allow us to give often discarded products a second life.

“For example, our Sustainable Sandia cocktail features Patron, which is one of the most sustainable tequila distilleries in the world. They donate over 5,500 tons of fertilizer compost annually from leftover agave fiber to local agave farmers and have donated or reforested approximately 16,000,000 trees in Jalisco, Mexico since 2015. For our sustainable Espresso Martini, we partnered with Absolut Elyx, which is carbon neutral and recycles the energy generated during distillation for reuse.

“At The Osprey, our main priority is to compensate unsustainable offenders in the creation of our drinks. For reference, our Zero Waste Daiquiri contains two ingredients that are the main offenders in an unsustainable bar program: citrus fruits and ice When making the cocktail, we zest the lime zest and add it to a syrup made from coconut water, then squeeze the zested lime so there’s no wasted citrus. and dehydrate the lime wheels to avoid throwing away the oxidized waste.Finally, we mix the cocktail with added water to dilute it and keep it in the freezer, which saves us having to shake it and empty the remnants of ice cream.

How do you select the suppliers that will be part of the farm-to-table concept?

Miranda: “We look for suppliers that align with our mission and are hyper-focused on sustainability. We regularly visit farmers markets to build relationships with the farmers we source from and keep in mind their locality and seasonality.

“Our ongoing dinner series, A Supper That Sustains Us, gives our local suppliers and partners a platform to share their perspective on sustainable methods and goals. We value connecting our clients with people at the forefront of our shared mission so they can learn to apply it in their own lives.

“We are also growing to inspire off-site sustainability. For example, we hosted our first dinner party at Fossil Farms, a company that supplies us with high-quality, all-natural meats in New Jersey.

Kocay: How important are local ingredients in a menu focused on sustainability?

Miranda: “Staying local is important when considering your carbon footprint. You want to limit the number of carbon emissions needed to deliver ingredients from where they are grown, sourced or processed, to the restaurant. It also gives you access to the best and freshest ingredients of the season.

“For example, our heritage chicken comes from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, which provides all-organic, free-range birds. When ordered, the chickens are already processed in New Jersey and shipped directly to us. There is no middle man and they are not stored anywhere. Additionally, the Amish don’t use a lot of electricity or resources in their production – they rely on old-fashioned farming methods.

Kocay: Can you tell us more about your zero waste initiatives and partnerships? How does this happen and what are their benefits?

Miranda: “Our partnerships are essential to our zero waste journey. All of our oyster shells are donated to the Billion Oyster Project, which restores live oysters to New York harbors. Too Good to Go and TRUE Food Waste help us reduce food waste, and Action Carting measures our composting and recycling rates. Other partners include Brooklyn Grange, Gotham Greens, Fossil Farms, Dock to Dish, D’Artagnan and Live Pure Smoothie Cubes.

“Food Print Group, a third-party consulting group that composes waste streams, monitors all of our recyclables that leave the site as well as organic waste, which is sent to a digester and returned to the wastewater treatment system as clean water. Since our inception with them, we have achieved 80% diversion to landfill, bringing us closer to our goal of 90% diversion.

“We have a designated sustainability manager, who helps find new partnerships and manage existing ones. It’s about staying connected within your network and community and doing your research to find the right partners for you.

The Osprey at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge

60 Furman Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

(347) 696-2505