Chef and zero waste trailblazer Mr Doug McMaster is sitting by the canal in Hackney Wick discussing the latest incarnation of Silo, his ultra-sustainable restaurant venture. On the cusp of opening, even with protracted building works to contend with, Mr McMaster’s enthusiasm for his venture’s new home, above Crate Brewery, is palpable. “It’s [got] the most beautiful light. Up there, just then, I thought, ‘Wow, this is going to be amazing,’” he says, thrilled to have relocated from his “cave-like” site in Brighton, which he set up in 2014.

At the turn of the last decade, having honed his craft at British institution St John, Mr McMaster, then in his early twenties, departed for Australia. It was there – while discussing the food component of a Sydney Harbour-side pop-up with eco-visionary and artist, Mr Joost Bakker – he was asked a life-changing question: “Could you just not have a bin?” As Mr McMaster says today, “That’s how it all began.” After the pair’s pioneering project – a building made of waste that grew food, with a restaurant inside that didn’t create waste – proved wildly successful, Messrs Bakker and McMaster joined forces on the first incarnation of Silo: the world’s first waste-free café, in Melbourne.

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How do you describe Silo to someone that has zero concept of zero waste?

It’s a restaurant without a bin. Even when I’m having heavy-duty chats with sustainability experts, that’s the best thing to say.

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What initially attracted you to sustainable dining?

[The Sydney pop-up] was so outrageous and unique. It was like, “I don't know what that is, but sign me up.” I’d worked at St John and, on reflection, it made an incredible impression, but they never talked about sustainability. It was just: “Why would we waste any bit of a pig?” And [with the cafe], I was like, “How the hell do you do [a bin-less] restaurant?” Go to farms, cook everything from scratch and then compost.

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What’s the process exactly?

It’s a reverse-engineered supply chain. It was unusual as a chef from Michelin star restaurants to [realise] you can only have what these farmers have. You can’t have 90 per cent of what those other chefs have. There’s no wholesaler you can call saying I need this tomorrow. It was very exciting and stressful. For the very first time, I was making products from freshly milled flour and freshly churned butter. The world was different then. Even at St John, you just bought butter. And it was while milling flour and churning butter that I started envisioning what Silo could be. It wasn’t: “We can save the world!” It was: “Fuck, this is so much more delicious than preprocessed flour and preprocessed butter!”

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_Was it tough going back to basics as a professional chef? _

Absolutely. I was learning how to cook from scratch. I’d started my career by cooking with preprocessed ingredients – then stepping back to: “OK, how’d you make creme fraiche or cheese? How do you roll oats?” And the first time you make sourdough or ferment food, you don’t have any understanding of how that works and there’s no point of reference.

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How was the experience of moving Silo from Melbourne to the UK?

There was a tonne of excitement and enthusiasm [in Melbourne]. In England, what we were doing back in 2014 was ahead of its time. Now, it’s perfect: the wave is cruising. It took about a year and a half to open Silo Brighton, and it was lonely, in a sort of “Why won't anyone listen?” way.

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What prompted the move to London?

Eighteen months ago, I randomly met Adam from Jarr Kombucha. He suggested I pitch the restaurant [to Crate Brewery], because they were looking for one, then it all happened very quickly… [When] I saw the space, I was like, “Fuck, this is amazing”. What do you say when you see people canoeing past? [Another reason is that] when people came to Silo in Brighton, [most] were coming from London. The universe was telling me to move here.

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Will you keep the same principles?

Exactly. Our mission statement was [roughly]: “How do we show the world how to do the right thing by nature without compromise?” Because you think sustainability and healthy eating means compromise. I not only believe [we have], but [I’ll be] refining it so you won’t realise it’s a zero-waste restaurant. You’ll just think: “This place is cool – these tables are wicked, these chairs are comfortable. There’s great service and a fascinating wine list. The cocktails are mad and delicious. The chefs are multicultural. It’s natural, fast and approachable. I’ll tell my friend.” Once again, it stems from Melbourne, from [thinking]: “What is zero waste? How can we work with nature, and not against it? How can we not take from this thing that feeds us and turn our backs on it?”

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I was a little surprised to see that menu for Silo London wasn’t vegan – why is that?

You can never argue with eating plant-based wild food. And in an urban environment, with the offering we have: go vegan – it’s the best way to reduce our carbon footprint. I ate vegan for a year. I [now] eat vegan nine times out of 10 at home. I’ve hosted six vegan debates at Silo. Debating the future of humans eating animal products (or not) is a passion. I also studied agriculture and came to some conclusions, predominantly surrounding the critical importance of animals as part of an agriculture that can support planet Earth and the humans who inhabit it. Without animals, problems arise, such as desertification, which happens in the absence of ruminants grazing. And for us to prevent or reverse it, our best hope is animals. My opinion is: we can have dairy, we can have animal products in a sustainable way. For example, we used to work with Knepp Castle, which is a rewilding estate down in Sussex, and one of their roles was culling the venison as there's no longer a natural predator for it, no wolf. Now, if left to populate, the deer would graze in a way that would destroy bird habitats, so bird populations would crash. So, they played god by culling the venison, which was an amazing way of eating meat.

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Let’s talk about the fish on your sample menu – I’ve never seen fantail squid before.

There’s a company called Forgotten Fish, this guy finds unpopular and underused things and sells them to chefs. He's become a good friend and I’ve been pushing him to source fish that’s amazing, but being thrown back in the ocean [because no one eats it]. He says there's no market for fantail squid, because people don’t know what it is. So, instead of using squid, I’ll use fantail squid. The other thing is cephalopods: squid, octopus, jellyfish and what not, are over-populating, because of both global warming and our eating whatever it is that preys on them, so there’s no natural predator.

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Octopi are supposedly very smart. Is that contentious?

This is a philosophical debate I’ve come into many times. It’s like saying, you’re more intelligent than me so you deserve to live and I deserve to die – definitely not fair. Faceless shellfish (oysters and mussels) will take priority on the menu, and I’ll be promoting them to vegans. Again, philosophically, there’s no difference between an oyster and a leek. Humans decide it’s unethical to kill an animal because it’s got eyes, a brain and a central nervous system (CNS), and we relate to it. I’m the same, I don’t want to see an animal in pain. But an oyster has no brain, no CNS, no face – to me, there’s nothing separating it ethically from a vegetable. And it’s super-duper sustainable, we could eat mussels for days, for decades, for centuries – there’s no end to faceless shellfish in the ocean.

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