In Denver restaurants, egg whites and chai are the secret to sustainability
share
DENVER — Restaurant Olivia prides itself on its handmade pasta. The recipe has made the Italian eatery, which opened in 2020, a consistent presence on best-of-Denver lists. The chefs even got a nod from the Michelin Guide.
But recently, the chefs at Restaurant Olivia revamped their tried-and-true pasta recipe — using the whole egg instead of mostly egg yolks — in the name of sustainability.
“The dough is just as fantastic as it was before, and it also means we spend less time separating the eggs,” said Addison Bollaert, chef de cuisine at Restaurant Olivia.
Restaurant Olivia is one of six businesses participating in Denver’s “Food Matters Restaurant Challenge”. The challenge pushes the businesses to practice more sustainable practices over a 12-week period to combat food waste in Colorado.
Nationally, restaurants are responsible for about a quarter of food waste. In 2023, restaurants and food service businesses in the United States generated nearly 13 million tons of surplus food. About 85% of that food waste ended up in landfills.
The first cohort of restaurants started the challenge Sept. 8 and will wrap up at the end of November.
Since the start of the challenge, the Denver restaurants have implemented food waste prevention strategies, like donating excess produce and repurposing food waste.
“I decided to enroll the restaurant in the challenge to build a more resilient, healthy and equitable food system,” said Paula Thomas, director of sustainability and food preservation at Restaurant Olivia.
Thomas joined the team in 2024. She has supported the restaurant’s sustainability vision by tracking energy and water consumption, repurposing food scraps and reducing waste.
One of the biggest challenges was what to do with all the leftover egg whites from making their pasta dough. Many pasta recipes call for a higher ratio of egg yolks to egg whites because the yolks have a higher fat and protein content, resulting in silkier and richer pasta.
This left the team scrambling to use up their remaining egg whites.
“We tried different types of cookies with egg whites, tried to donate some and the rest we used creatively for family meals,” Thomas said.
Throughout the challenge, the team experimented with different ratios of egg white to egg yolk without compromising the pasta’s texture and taste.
Bollaert believes they’ve done it.
“It’s just as good as before,” she said. “The whole kitchen is participating in finding ways to do this challenge and it’s been fun to see everybody rally around a common good.”
Thomas says the restaurant will save $8,000 a year by tackling just this one egg white issue.
The back-of-house staff at Restaurant Olivia have been trying to reduce the amount of trash and compost that comes out of the kitchen. A lot of food waste is repurposed right below the kitchen, in the restaurant’s basement.
The walls in the basement are lined with jars of preserved lemons, apple scrap vinegar and ginger beer — all made in-house from leftovers otherwise destined for the trash or compost. Kitchen staff and bartenders use the ingredients as well, leading to dishes and drinks with unique flavors.
The team dehydrates and grinds many vegetable scraps into fine powders, giving cooks access to unique options like celeriac leaf powder and fermented rhubarb powder for the kitchen.
“There are all things that other kitchens would just normally compost,” Thomas said. “We give it a second life.”
Across town, the baristas at Blue Sparrow Coffee are giving a second life to chai.
“Throughout this challenge, we’ve been able to learn a great way to stretch out our chai spices,” said Danny DeLeon, manager at Blue Sparrow’s Platte Street location. The cafe is one of the other businesses participating in the “Food Matters” challenge.
During the first stages of the challenge, Blue Sparrow met with Jonathan Deutsch, a hospitality educator at Drexel Food Labs, to discuss where they could reduce waste. On day one, Deutsch brought up the chai component and brainstormed ways that Blue Sparrow could reuse it multiple times.
Chai spices are among the most expensive products that Blue Sparrow stocks up on. Chai also happens to be one of the most popular products at all three Blue Sparrow locations.
Before the challenge, Blue Sparrow staff brewed the spices with water for 40 minutes, then discarded them into the compost. This process yielded six quarts of chai.
Now, after the initial 40 minutes, they’ll scoop out the spices and brew it again with half the amount of water they initially used. This creates a more concentrated flavor, according to DeLeon.
The baristas now mix this second batch with the first batch, creating 10 quarts of chai.
“We incorporate the batches that we make so there’s a consistent flavor all around, at no point are you getting a very weak chai or an overly strong one. It’s consistent,” DeLeon said.
Once they’re done making chai, Blue Sparrow staff send the spices to the bar next door, Room for Milly, where the bartender makes a simple syrup with them for a fall drink.
So far, with Blue Sparrow’s updated chai recipe, the business has saved 71 lbs of sugar and 111 lbs of waste (and more than $2,500 in cost).
“Some people may be a little frightened to hear that through some of these processes, they might be getting a product of lesser quality, but that can’t be further from the truth,” said Sara Van Hatten, sustainability manager at Mainspring, which owns Blue Sparrow.
As the food challenge comes to an end, the city of Denver hopes that the first cohort will inspire more restaurants to take up the challenge in 2026.
“We’re trying to make food waste not this dirty little secret, but putting it out there and normalizing it so that we can be better,” said Lesly Baesens, food waste program administrator for the city of Denver.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.