Redefining what it means to get wasted
In our first instalment in a series on how to live waste free, we look at a bartending duo that aims to address excess trash at bars with online resources and a cross-continental pop-up tour
A Canadian and an Australian bartender are shaking up cocktails around the world, hoping to inspire their industry to stop trashing pres-queezed lime husks.
Cocktail connoisseurs Kelsey Ramage and Iain Griffiths have teamed up to launch Trash Tiki, an online resource and global tour of pop-up bars — stopping in Toronto later this month — that advocate for sustainable boozy beverage-making.
“We call our drinks anti-waste and anti-consumerist, so the idea is if you reduce the amount you’re consuming, then you in turn reduce the amount you are throwing away,” said Ramage, 32, who grew up in a small town in British Columbia.
Trash Tiki’s founders met while mixing drinks at award-winning cocktail joints in London. Ramage remembers a time she was irked by a photo of trash bin filled with citrus at the hotel bar where she worked and knew was serving daiquiris and margaritas. If that was happening at just one spot every night — how much of the same, or worse, was happening elsewhere?
The duo’s website features a recipe for citrus stock that makes use of already-juiced fruit, to address the fact that “citrus is once again front and centre, this time as it is by far the biggest waste product of any craft cocktail bar.”
Along with their tour of pop-up bars, Ramage and Griffiths are hosting industry seminars in each city they visit that are open to the public. Plans for a seminar in Toronto haven’t been finalized, but updates related to the tour are made on the project’s Instagram.
Anton Potvin, sommelier and managing partner of DaiLo (and LoPan upstairs) is excited to host Trash Tiki later this month. He said being able to creatively reuse ingredients stands to make bars more environmentally friendly and financially lucrative.
Opportunities to stretch ingredients further like those highlighted by Ramage and Griffiths probably cross the minds of many in his industry, Potvin said. But the noted that the bartending world moves ultra fast so these ideas don’t always make their way to fruition.
“Perhaps surprisingly, (zero/antiwaste) isn’t really an idea that has infiltrated the bar scene that much — certainly not as much as the rest of restaurants, like it does in kitchens,” he said.
But that may be changing, Potvin thinks. The Toronto-based sommelier says cocktail culture is evolving, with bartenders treating their drinks and the ingredients they use to make them similar to the way chefs prepare meals in kitchens — making many of the component parts to their recipes in-house. In that regard, Trash Tiki has ideas. The project suggests soaking a couple of stale almond croissants (swiped from the closest neighbourhood café once they are unsellable) in white rum, boiling water and sugar for 12 hours. Pulverize it all in a
“Perhaps surprisingly, (zero/anti-waste) isn’t really an idea that has infiltrated the bar scene that much — certainly not as much as the rest of restaurants, like it does in kitchens.” ANTON POTVIN SOMMELIER AND MANAGING PARTNER OF DAILO
blender and filter it to get “Cafe Orgeat” — a take on the sweet almondy syrup used most frequently to make Mai Tai’s, but less an extra glass bottle and unnecessarily trashed baked goods.
This mix is featured in the “Trash Tai,” Griffiths and Ramage’s signature drink with Trash Tiki — a mix they say walks the line between a Margarita and a Mai Tai.
The duo is still figuring out what is next for their project once the tour wraps up. They are mulling over the possibility of opening a space or starting a community project. Trash Tiki’s tour will be shaking in Toronto on Aug. 20 and 21 at LoPan snack and cocktail bar at 503 College St, on top of DaiLo.