RUNNING A WATER-WISE RESTAURANT
The professional saver
Studio H do? To put it plainly, and as the name suggests, it designs experiences and events — especially relating to food. So, for example, the team is involved in events for big clients such as Nando’s and Woolworths, organising a food festival and producing a magazine about food. It also handles installations and projects like the ones you might see in the centre court of a shopping mall that aim to get people thinking about matters such as sustainability and the provenance of what we eat.
Because of the world’s water crisis, a lot of its work revolves around this theme.
So when Studio H was invited to take part in the annual Dutch Design Week (DDW) last year, a water-based project seemed like the obvious choice. And since the team was working together with
Dutch initiative Agri Meets Design, which pairs designers with farmers and people in the industry who work at solving agricultural problems, Studio H started by looking at a couple of futuristic farming projects in Holland.
Visser says 69% of the world’s freshwater usage is in agriculture. According to nonprofit organisation Water Education Foundation, a cup of lettuce requires 11l of water to grow. So does a potato. And a mere
122 g of tomato needs a staggering 30l.
And that’s all before one considers how much water livestock need.
Saline agriculture
There are, fortunately, people looking at how to reduce these staggering numbers. Visser says: “We found out about Salt Farm Texel in the Netherlands. It has been researching this for 10 years and is entirely committed to developing saline [sea water] agriculture. The farm has grown a number of salttolerant crops.”
Amazingly, these crops include potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, garlic and onion. Salt Farm Texel has been testing the viability of a large-scale salt-tolerant potato crop in Pakistan since 2014, so this is no fly-by-night operation.
Studio H’s DDW project invited visitors to sample this produce. “Compare a carrot grown in sea water with one normally cultivated and you can taste the difference. Strangely, the salt water version is sweeter,” Visser says.
Taking the concept one step further, the Studio H team has since developed entirely water-free products from the salt-tolerant veggies and fruit. “We call it our S/zout Pantry,” says Visser. There are carrot “fruit loops”, flavoured salts and even a ketchup made from salt-tolerant tomatoes and a touch of vinegar and sugar. “Zero freshwater was used in the growing of the ingredients and the making of this food,” she says.
On January 23, 24 and 25 the Studio H team is hosting S/zout Waterless Dinners in Cape Town. A four-course menu will include crudités and garlic dip, flame-grilled mackerel (a very sustainable fish), ostrich meat and even camel milk ice cream. “Ostriches are like camels,” says Visser. “It’s not essential for them to drink water, so it’s the best water-wise meat.”
The camel milk comes from Upington, and the ostrich meat is local too.
Of course it’s not all cut and, umm, dry. For now, Capetonians probably shouldn’t be popping down to Clifton Fourth Beach to gather sea water to irrigate their vegetable patches.
“We’d have to do real research into the pollution levels of our sea water to [find out whether we can] make this viable,” says Visser.
But it’s a kernel of an idea. And, Visser adds, it’s one that is just the first of loads of other ways to mitigate the aqua-usurping disaster that is cooking and eating.
What does she recommend as a start in modifying meal preparation? “Washing fruit and vegetables uses a whack of water, so wipe them instead. And use disposable cutlery, crockery and serviettes so there’s no need to clean up afterwards,” Visser says.
The proceeds of the S/zout Waterless Dinners will go to Veld & Sea — a food-foraging network
(yes, it will teach you to collect food from the land and the ocean).
If there’s one chef in SA who knows a thing or two about water-wise cooking, it’s Kobus van der Merwe, who owns and runs Wolfgat in Paternoster on the West Coast.
The food he dishes up at the seaside restaurant is largely from the area, which is dry at the best of times. Van der Merwe uses endemic wild edibles and seaweed in his cooking, as these need very little in the way of fresh water. “Samphires, for example,” he says, referring to halophytes, or plants that grow naturally in highly saline water. “We use them in our cooking and I see that Woolies is selling them now. They’re even being cultivated in southern Namibia to be used for biofuel.”
Seaweed in particular is a great yearround water-wise option, and if you have a recreational fishing permit, you’re allowed to pick it.
The Wolfgat team also minimises fresh-water usage in the restaurant in simple ways. Waiters don’t change wine glasses after every course, and four of the dishes on the seven-course menu require no cutlery.
“We do a dish that’s plated on a cabbage leaf — so you can even eat that too,” the award-winning chef says. “You wouldn’t believe how much water we save by not having to wash so many glasses, dishes and knives and forks.”
Van der Merwe reckons people need to take a long, hard look at the way in which they use resources, and they need to be more self-reliant. “We’ve got to look at diversification of our diets too,” he says.
“If you eat a hundred different kinds of food versus, say, 30, that immediately takes pressure off production of a small number of products. You only need a little bit of each.”