Reharvest is Project Green Fork’s largest fundraiser. (Photo: Courtesy Project Green Fork)
Any way you slice it or dice it, food is food, says Leann Edwards, Project Green Fork program director. “It’s meant to feed people. If it doesn’t feed people, then it has other purposes. It feeds animals; it feeds the soil to grow more food. And so seeing food as valuable, in all of its forms, is part of what we’re trying to do through Project Green Fork (PGF).”
This weekend’s fundraising event is one such example of that effort as some of the city’s most innovative chefs try their hand at creating hors d’oeuvres using surplus ingredients from the Mid-South Food Bank, Cordelia’s Market, and Alpha Omega Veteran Services. They’ll transform what could have gone to waste into beautiful and tasty dishes for guests to try. It’s a chance for these tatemakers to flex their creativity but also to showcase sustainability efforts.
“One thing that Project Green Fork does is, we work to rescue food surplus, generally prepared food from restaurants and special events catering,” Edwards says. “We take that rescued food through our network of rescue organizations and turn it into something beautiful for people who experience food insecurity in our city. And so Reharvest is a way for us to show people in the community that food that’s appropriate for donation is also food that’s appropriate for us to share and enjoy.”
The chefs participating in this year’s Reharvest are Dave Krog (formerly of Dory), Terrance Whitley (Inspire Community Cafe), Daishu McGriff (Shroomlicious Meals), Monique Williams (Biscuits & Jams), Josh Mutchnick (JEM Dining), and Kat Gordon (Muddy’s Bake Shop). All of the chefs are PGF-certified, meaning they have been trained in PGF’s sustainability practices.
In addition to the one-of-a-kind fare made by these chefs, attendees will receive complimentary beer, wine, a signature cocktail, and a mocktail. B. Sartain will also be doing live art, and that piece of art will be sold in a silent action. This is PGF’s largest fundraiser of the year, Edwards says.
“We have a goal of 50 percent reduction in food waste by 2030 and we’re not close,” she adds. “We’re working on it. But it can feel daunting. But then you remember, every bit of progress is progress, and every time someone makes the connection between saving their food and the community and saving money for themselves and saving the environment, it really feels like a win.”
That’s one of the goals of this event — to make that connection for people — and get just a little bit closer to that 50 percent reduction. Tickets can be purchased at tinyurl.com/2uu5jcy6.
Reharvest Memphis, Collage Dance Center, 505 Tillman Street, Thursday, November 14, 5:30-8:30 p.m., $79.57, 21+.
Bianca Phillips and Joe Yester (Photos: Michael Donahue)
Loving Local returned this spring in a new location : Grind City Brewing Company.
And, to make things even more festive, tap room manager Ashley Creecy created a special drink, “Peach, Please,” for the Project Green Fork event. It’s made with black tea, peach juice, lemon juice, and a Grind City seltzer base, all garnished with a lemon wheel and fresh mint sprig.
Jon Van Hoozer, Will Coleman, Donna Van HoozerAli Manning and Beth WilsonDaniel Taylor and Daishu McGriff
“The staff was fantastic to work with,” says Leann Edwards, Clean Memphis/Project Green Fork program director. “And the location is a great backdrop, with a lot of places for people to roam.”
Guests also dined in the tap room where they could “get a respite from the heat.”
Kevin SullivanSelah and Darius NelsonKofi Asare, Khendra Lucas, Ashley Peterson, Meredith Woloshin, Nathan Woloshin
About 300 people attended the event, which featured fare from Biscuits & Jams, Good Fortune Co., Kitchen Laurel, Lulu’s Cafe & Bakery, and Shroomlicious Meals.
“Our chefs really love to be part of this event,” says Edwards. As a press release states, “This community event celebrates the creativity of Project Green Fork certified chefs, breweries, and bartenders who create custom, small-plate appetizers, desserts, and cocktails for the evening.”
Enjoy delicious sustainable meals at Reharvest Memphis. (Photo: Project Green Fork)
In the U.S., 40 percent of the food produced goes uneaten and is sent to the landfill, yet the majority of this food is still good for consumption — a fact to which Project Green Fork (PGF), an offshoot of Clean Memphis, wants to brings awareness, especially with their upcoming Reharvest Memphis.
At the event, says program director Leann Edwards, local PGF-certified chefs will prepare hors d’oeuvres using surplus ingredients rescued from the Mid-South Food Bank and Cordelia’s Market. The chefs, whose PGF certification dictates that they have taken measures to practice sustainability in their restaurants, will be Don Gaines and Stephanie Blanda of LuLu’s Cafe & Bakery, Sarah Cai and Arturo Leighton of Good Fortune Co., Daishu McGriff from Shroomlicious Meals, Becky Githinji and Shane Wigginton from Tamboli’s, and David Self from Paper Plate Pavilion. “It’s important to support these restaurants who are taking sustainability measures,” says Edwards.
Prior to visiting the food bank and Cordelia’s on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the event, the chefs won’t know what ingredients they’re working with, which means they won’t know what dishes they’ll create. “That’s part of the fun of it,” Edwards says. “It turns into a really exciting, creative process for them as well. … [Last year at my first Reharvest] I was very excited by how excited they were — just the fun of chopping these ingredients and watching their wheels turn and figure out how they could use them in really creative ways. And people made desserts, savory dishes, and even though they had the same sort of components to shop from, everyone created something very different in their own wheelhouse.”
In addition to sampling the top-notch restaurant fare, attendees will be able to mingle with the chefs, ask questions about their dishes, and hopefully learn tips on how to utilize ingredients that might go otherwise to waste. “That’s really our intention — to rethink food waste in a way that’s delicious and sustainable,” Edwards says. “There’s sometimes a stigma around surplus food that might be appropriate for donation. And we really just want to show people through these creative chefs that surplus food can be super delicious and creatively used and nourishing and wholesome at the same time.”
This year’s Reharvest Memphis also happens to coincide with PGF’s Downtown leg of the new 901 Save the Food Challenge: Restaurant Edition, which has been working with restaurants neighborhood by neighborhood to reduce food waste. The event, Edwards says, showcases the impacts that initiatives like the 901 Save the Food Challenge and just minimizing food waste in general can make in the culinary landscape.
Tickets for Reharvest Memphis can be purchased at tinyurl.com/5n8542jm. Tickets include complimentary wine, beer, a signature cocktail, and a mocktail.
Reharvest Memphis, Beale Street Landing, 251 Riverside Drive, Thursday, November 16, 5:30-8:30 p.m., $75, 21+.
Myra Cochrane, Grace Hill, Grace Siler, Kristen Lloyd at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)
I asked Beth Wilson what she was eating at that moment at Loving Local.
“Goodness,” she replied.
She had just visited Good Fortune Company’s food station, where chefs Sarah Cai and Arturo Leighton were serving “Big City Halal Cart” — chicken or tofu over rice.
So, I had to try it a.s.a.p. “Goodness” — and may I add “gracious” — it was so over-the-top good.
Arturo Leighton and Sarah Cai at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Janet Boscarino, Kathleen Quinlen, and Beth Wilson at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Good Fortune was just one of the food stations at the Project Green Fork event held June 15th at The Ravine.
Also on hand were Monique Williams of Biscuits & Jams, Kevin Sullivan from Tsunami, Terrance Whitley of Inspire Community Cafe, and Caleb and Brandon Ellenburg from Central BBQ.
Caleb Ellenburg and Brandon Ellenburg at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Kayla Pritchett, Chef Mo (Monique Williams), and Maegan Jade at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Stacy and Kevin Williams at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Terrance Whitley, Jacqueline Thomas, and Jayden Whitley at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Gabrielle Shirley at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Project Green Fork is part of Clean Memphis, whose mission is to make Memphis a cleaner and greener city. The certified Clean Memphis restaurants at Loving Local take six steps to reduce their environmental impacts. That includes recycling, composting, and not using styrofoam.
The restaurants at Loving Local were among the 40 Project Green Fork certified restaurants, says Clean Memphis project manager Lisa Brown.
Lisa Brown at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)
“We’re spearheading zero waste events in Memphis,” Brown says. “Zero waste doesn’t literally mean no waste. It means sending the least amount of material to the landfill with our preferred waste streams being recycling and composting.
“We work with chefs and attendees to make sure everybody understands that we’re trying to keep as much material out of the landfill as possible. So, for our events, we typically send as low as three percent of the event waste to the landfill. And the other waste is either recycled or composted. We’re talking zero waste to the landfill because that stuff is going to sit there for 30 years. That stuff will likely outlive you and me.”
About 200 or so people attended Loving Local, which Brown describes as “an event that is fun for the entire family. You want to make sure the kids all the way up to grandparents are able to come to this event and eat good food and have fun.”
And, she says, “The guests are also able to mingle and talk with the chefs about their dish, about their restaurant, about their personal mission for environmental sustainability.”
Jake Tribble and Becky Campbell at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Rob and Lauren Williams at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Rob Jaffe and Sara Boscarino at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Hayes Nobert and Margaret Cowens at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Jake Allen, Janice Allen, Shelia Allen-Barron, Tammy Herron at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Sierra and Jack Lowry at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)
If you missed Loving Local, make plans to attend Project Green Fork’s Reharvest Memphis November 16th Downtown. The annual event is “to bring the awareness to the overall issue of food waste and how we are encouraged to think about food waste.”
They work with four or five chefs, who take surplus food “nearing the end of its life,” and “create new purposes for it.” Brown says.
For instance, a chef might take surplus Mid-South Food Bank cans of black eyed peas nearing their expiration date and, instead of sending them to a landfill, they create a dish with them. “We encourage attendees to be more creative with our food instead of looking at food as a resource and not necessarily as a commodity.”
In August, they will begin a new project, Brown says. “We’re planning a restaurant challenge. We will ask local restaurants to basically adopt two to three new practices that are going to help them reduce the majority amount of food waste that they’re producing. We’re going to start this in the Crosstown Evergreen area.”
Drew and Melodie Barton at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Jared Bulluck, George Abbott, Shaleen Ragha at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Dawn and Mike Weaver at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Ivan and Amanda Janga at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Scot Cowan, Michelle Cowan, Steve Boscarino, Georgia Edwards, Rob Jaffe, Sara Boscarino at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)DJ Alpha Whiskey at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue) Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)David Moore, Phoebe Moore, Tommy Schlather, Emma Simmons at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Kristen Rambo, Silas Armstrong, Elizabeth Blondis at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Duncan Galbraith and Day Galbraith at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Tim Hartline, Brandon Moss, Brenda Moss, Monica Townsend, Ben Townsend at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)Emma Page, Becky Campbell, Heather Page at Loving Local (Credit: Michael Donahue)We Saw You
Laura Gentry, Michael Donahue, and Dory sous chef Brandon Burke with a citrus-braised pork tostada at Loving Local. (Credit: Nannie Harris)
Memphis never fails to amaze me. And I’m a native Memphian.
I received an invitation to Loving Local, a Project Green Fork tasting event with cuisine from area restaurants, which was held June 16th at The Ravine at 435 Madison Avenue.
I’d never been to The Ravine. And, I discovered, this was the first event at the venue, which hasn’t officially opened yet.
Wow. Was I surprised when I saw the space. In addition to the beautiful about-to-open Memphis Made Brewing Co., the outdoor area in the rear was mind blowing. Looking down from a balcony, I saw tables, food vendors, DJ Crystal Mercedes, and plenty of room.
Let me reiterate. Wow.
I called Ethan Knight to fill me in on The Ravine. Knight is vice-president of development for Development Services Group, the lead master developer for a number of efforts in The Edge District, which includes The Ravine, Rise apartments, and Orion Federal Credit Union.
“The Ravine is difficult to describe because it’s really unusual,” Knight says. “It’s a community gathering point, a public plaza, a park, and, ultimately, it creates a natural gathering point for The Edge District.
Loving Local at The Ravine. (Credit: Michael Donahue
“We’ve taken a piece of land that was basically a throw away. Was totally forgotten. We saw this unique opportunity to make it a very unique public space. That idea has evolved over time. Me and our team have been working on this for seven plus years. Trying to figure out how this whole Edge District comes together.”
The Ravine was an old railway, which used to be the end of the old Norfolk Southern Railway, Knight says. “There was a railroad station north of Madison back before Danny Thomas [Boulevard]. Tracks ran along The Ravine and underneath Monroe and Madison. In the ‘60s and ‘70s the train station went away and they put in Danny Thomas. I’m a civil engineer by trade, so all that stuff is fascinating to me.”
That view from the balcony where I was standing is “20 feet below Madison,” Knight says. Noting the trees above, he says, “We have tons of shade — morning shade, evening shade. You’re down in this bowl. Down in this ravine. It’s a good bit cooler down there than up on Madison and Monroe.”
And that’s a fact. I told someone at the party, “It’s not so bad tonight.” I thought temperatures had cooled down, but I think it was because of where I was standing at The Ravine.
The Ravine is “a long term vision,” Knight says. “What you saw last night is just the beginning in a sense. We have a whole second phase of plans for The Ravine after we see how people use it. It will continue to grow and evolve over time as The Edge District grows.”
Memphis Made Brewing Co. co-owner/president Drew Barton says, “I’m hoping we’re up and running pretty soon. Waiting on a few final things. Code inspections.”
This will be the second location of Memphis Made Brewing Co., which is at 768 South Cooper. It put out its first beer October 11, 2013, Barton says. “We’re keeping our current location. We’re just adding a second location, (which is) probably 17,000 square feet. So, it’s roughly three times the size of our current location.”
Janet Boscarino and Drew Barton at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
They thought The Ravine would be open in time for the event, says Janet Boscarino, executive director of Clean Memphis, the umbrella group that includes Project Green Fork. “We pushed on,” she says. The event “allowed people to see the space and see what it’s going to look like.”
Clean Memphis’s mission is “to work on Memphis, making a cleaner and greener city.”
Project Green Fork is “our restaurant sustainability certification, where our restaurants take six steps to reduce their environmental impacts.”
That includes “recycling, composting, and not using styrofoam. And so all the chefs that were there are all from Project Green Fork certified restaurants.”
Participating Project Green Fork restaurants represented at Loving Local were Good Fortune Co., Hen House, Salt/Soy, Tsunami, Da Guilty Vegan, and Dory. Mempops also was on hand. The Tipsy Tumbler provided the bartending service.
Loving Local at The Ravine. (Credit: Michael Donahue)JeraVonte Twillie from Hen House at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Manus McMeen at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Sarah Cai and Arturo Leighton from Good Fortune Co. at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
“We do zero-waste events,” Boscarino says. “We control the atmosphere so that anything that comes in material wise can be recycled and composted, including forks, cups, everything. Food scraps, plates, everything that can be composted, and beer and wine bottles recycled. It’s a way for us to socialize the idea of zero waste.”
More than 200 attended, Boscarino says. “We loved it. Every time we do Loving Local — we’ve been on a two-year hiatus from the pandemic — we try to do it in a new location. The first one we did was when Loflin Yard was just opening. We were the first event in the Old Dominick space. We always try to find a new and interesting place that’s about to open.”
The Ravine has “that perfect indoor/outdoor atmosphere. The fact you’re in a ravine, which was something overlooked as a dead space, is now infused with energy and innovation. We love those kinds of spaces and bringing people together in them.”
Lajoyce Cole, Becky and Mike Todd, Devin Marzette, and Kevin Marzette at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Ari Zelig and Danielle Blake at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)DJ Crystal Mercedes at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Henry Turley and Wanda Shea at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Rob Jaffe, Sara Boscarino, Conner Forrester, Stewart Hart, Leesa Gavin, Georgia Edwards, and Jake Ratliff at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Bill Ganus, Ali Manning, George Abbott, and Shaleen Ragha at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Faith Butler and Nannie Harris at Loving Local. (Credit: Michael Donahue) We Saw You
Bruce VanWyngarden has gone fishing this week. His column returns when he does.
A few years ago, I was having lunch with a coworker who proceeded to go on a long and sort of crazy rant about how much she hates it when restaurants bundle their straws with silverware. After that, when someone complained bitterly about something of no consequence, “straws” became a sort of shorthand dismissal.
So where do we stand, Memphis, on plastic straws? Is this as an issue “straws”?
Bianca Phillips
As a single-use plastic, plastic straws are pretty bad. Millions and millions of plastic straws are used each day in America and then tossed out to litter our lands and shores. Some cities, like Malibu and Washington, D.C., have already banned them. In New York and Hawaii, legislation is pending.
In Memphis, we’re seeing more and more restaurants abandoning the plastic straw.
Janet Boscarino, executive director of Clean Memphis, which oversees Project Green Fork, estimates that about half of Project Green Fork members (about 40 restaurants) have given up plastic straws. But, as of now, Project Green Fork does not include anything about straws in their “6 Steps to Certification” for local restaurants.
“We certainly push for the elimination of single-use plastics, which straws would fall into that category,” Boscarino says.
For Earth Day, Project Green Fork did a program they called “Don’t Suck,” which highlighted recyclable options for straws, including paper and bamboo. “We are certainly trying to raise awareness around eliminating [straws],” she says.
For Boscarino, straws are just once piece of the puzzle in reducing food waste — from bags to food containers to the food itself.
Deni Reilly, owner of Majestic Grille with her husband Patrick, says that restaurant has been straws-by-request since it opened 14 years ago. They only began to use coated paper straws about two years ago. (They go through 12,000 to 14,000 straws in a month.)
Reilly says they’ve always leaned toward being environmentally conscious. They don’t provide water, except for large parties. Their to-go glasses are biodegradable.
She says with a laugh that they do it for the sea turtles.
Octavia Young, the owner of Midtown Crossing Grill, began backing away from straws in 2016 about a year after she opened. She says she was thinking about joining Project Green Fork and started looking at what she could do. She then put up a sign: “Straws are a one-time use item that never biodegrade. Your server will only provide straws upon request in an effort to reduce our footprint. Thank you.”
Young says reaction was mixed, but ultimately, no one can argue, because as the sign says, if they want a straw, all they have to do is ask.
“Hearing about how much [waste] a restaurant produces and actually looking at it for myself, I wanted to be a better neighbor in the community that we serve,” she says.
Scott Tashie has been thinking about straws a lot lately. Tashie is owner of City Silo and three area I Love Juice Bars.
“It’s something we’ve been trying to come up with a solution on for a while, actually,” he says. “And it’s super challenging. Obviously, when you’re in a beverage-heavy business, you want to always take care of your customers, and we’ve tried different options. It’s been challenging to find something that actually works.”
At one point, Tashie was using glass straws, but then his source stopped making them. He tried a bring-your-own straw approach, too. He admits that a straw is not something that’s particularly easy to carry on you, like a reusable bag.
Tashie has been experimenting with different types of straws. Forgoing them completely won’t work because of the smoothies he sells. He recently settled on corn straws that he hooked up with through his association with Malco. (He has family ties to the movie theater chain). Malco is currently working to get corn straws at all of its theaters.
Tashie doesn’t mind the extra cost of the straws. For him, it’s worth it. “There’s only one Earth,” he says. “You can’t really put a price on it.”
Back in 2007, Margot McNeeley noticed most local restaurants were still using Styrofoam takeout containers. Upon further inspection, she also realized most weren’t recycling. So she set out to do something about it.
McNeeley founded Project Green Fork (PGF), a restaurant sustainability certification program that helps restaurateurs commit to recycling, using Earth-friendly takeout boxes, and green cleaners.
It’s grown to include 75 PGF-certified restaurants, catering companies, and coffee shops across the city. Since 2008, those restaurants have recycled more than four million pounds of plastic, glass, aluminum, cardboard, and paper and more than 200,000 gallons of food waste.
But as of the first of the year, McNeeley is stepping down as PGF’s executive director, and the organization, which was previously a stand-alone organization, is being merged into the programs at Clean Memphis, a grassroots nonprofit that organizes volunteer cleanups and does sustainability outreach education in schools and in the community.
“I’m ready to take on something new. And I think I’ve taken Project Green Fork as far as I can take it as a one-woman show,” said McNeeley, who has operated the organization by herself since its 2008 founding. “Clean Memphis has a much larger budget and more resources than we ever did, and they have a bigger staff and the capability to take it further.”
PGF certifies restaurants that promise to adhere to six steps: 1) convert disposables to compostable, biodegradable products; 2) recycle all recyclable items; 3) develop a composting process; 4) use nontoxic cleaning products; 5) make efforts to conserve energy and water; and 6) maintain grease traps and kitchen hoods to prevent overflows and emissions to sewer and storm systems.
Under Clean Memphis, McNeeley says PGF will maintain the six steps to certification.
“I don’t want people who have supported this for so long to think it’s going away,” McNeeley said. “It’s continuing and will be taken to the next level, whatever that next level may be.”
Janet Boscarino cofounded Clean Memphis in 2008, along with her neighbor Darrin Hills and his boss Mark Lovell, to organize volunteers to pick up litter. The organization also does outreach education work in schools, and they developed a Sustainable Schools program to certify schools in much the same way that PGF certifies restaurants.
In the program’s 20 certified schools, students volunteer for cleanups, plant vegetable gardens, learn about watershed health and water quality, and participate in other sustainable initiatives.
“When we were developing that program, Margot was one of the people I reached out to because of her work with sustainability in restaurants,” Boscarino said. “We grew our understanding of each other’s missions and vision of what we would see Memphis becoming with restaurants and schools moving toward more sustainability.”
Boscarino said, when McNeeley approached her a few months ago about merging the organizations, she knew it would be a good fit. The boards of directors for both organizations discussed the matter, and a decision was reached to pull the PGF program into Clean Memphis’ fold.
“At this point, we don’t see any changes to the program,” Boscarino said. “It’s been very successful, so especially for the first year, we would bring that program under our umbrella and get to know it and understand the ins and outs, as opposed to making any changes.”
Clean Memphis is currently searching for a program coordinator to run PGF. That person will run the day-to-day operations, like McNeeley did, but Clean Memphis will handle the administrative tasks associated with PGF, something McNeeley had to manage on her own before the merger.
“The new program coordinator can just focus on building the program and promoting the restaurants and sustainability,” Boscarino said.
As for what McNeeley will do next, she won’t say yet: “I have three things I’m working on, but I’m not ready to announce any.”
If you haven’t yet, there’s still time to sign up for Project Green Fork’s annual Loving Local fund-raiser, which takes place tomorrow (Saturday, Oct. 4th, 6-9pm) at the Malco Summer Drive-In. Order tickets online, or just show up at the door.
Want to be entertained? There will be live music by Impala, miniature golf, giant Jenga, cornhole, and a silent auction. Auction items, which include caramels from Shotwell Candy Co. and custom jewelry from The Bead Couture, can be viewed on Project Green Fork’s instagram.
If all else fails, you can always just look up. During the event, two classic movies—both shot in Memphis—will be playing on the big screen: Mystery Train and Walk the Line.
Since 2009, Project Green Fork has helped Memphis restaurants become more environmentally friendly by teaching them to do things like compost, use less water, and recycle. Tickets to this year’s fund-raiser start at $30, but if you upgrade to a VIP pass, you can get some cool swag.
Bianca Phillips 
