David Rejhon was introduced to sustainability by his grandmother. “She was harsh, because she experienced the Second World War. She checked whether the water was running unnecessarily when I was brushing my teeth, and whether I turned off the light in the room where I wasn’t at the moment,” fondly recalls the chef of the Prague restaurant The Artisan, which became famous for its ecological and local mindset and effort to minimize waste.
“It comes naturally to me to think in a way that we waste and throw away as little as possible,” says chef David Rejhon in the premises of The Artisan restaurant. “From a young age, I grew up in a household where we saved water, electricity and food,” says the supporter of sustainability, which is the basic philosophy of the restaurant at the Prague Marriott Hotel.
Together with a forty-member team, he therefore ferments vegetable and fruit scraps and produces vinegars from them. They also preserve seasonal fruits, collect ingredients from the forest and meadows, and make homemade syrups. What they don’t use, they compost in the basement. And they repair broken plates according to the ancient Japanese Kincugi technique.
“Such an approach seems simply right to me. Of course you have to make an extra effort, but the world’s Michelin restaurants have stars precisely because they are better than others,” says Rejhon, while standing in the kitchen next to one of the first cultivators in the Czech Republic. “We grow about forty types of our own sprouts and herbs,” says Rejhon, who tries as much as possible for his own production.
“In addition, the cultivator uses only twelve liters of water per month. It maintains humidity, so the water is constantly circulating in it,” he describes, walking into the “backstage” of the restaurant, where he stops at a large refrigerator full of multicolored glasses. “These are the oils we produce. We most often process peppers, of which we consume up to forty kilos a day. We then macerate pepper oil from the remaining seven kilos of stalks and seeds,” Rejhon describes.
“I don’t do this”
He worked for Marriott Hotel in Southeast Asia for six years. When they approached him five years ago to run a steak restaurant in the Prague branch, he refused. “I thanked him and explained that it didn’t make sense for me to bring steaks from Brazil. I told the management then that I am a completely different person, that I cook with ingredients that grow around me and that I want to support local farmers,” he recalls. “But in the end they offered me that I could change the concept and build a restaurant according to my philosophy,” he says.
He is currently most proud of the dandelion buds that he and his team have collected in recent weeks. They have a whatsapp group in which he writes to his employees what is currently growing and what they could pick at the weekend. “I try to encourage young guys not to waste all their free days, but to spend time in nature. Let them go to the pub just one day and the next let them take their girlfriend to the forest and collect something,” Rejhon says with a laugh. “Of course, they get a reward for the plants and herbs they find,” he adds.
Don’t throw away, but fix
He is assisted in the kitchen by a team of forty people, each of whom devotes twenty minutes a day to the “sustainable concept”. This means that some work time is spent, for example, processing leftover raw materials or loading. “I want to pass on the ecological mindset to as many people as possible, get them excited and teach them how to do it. For example, that it is not at all difficult to clean, dry, mix and make spices from the skins of root vegetables,” Rejhon gives an example by the wall on which hangs seasonal calendar.
“For each month, we have written down what the farmers we work with will grow. Below is what current oils, vinegars or fermented vegetables we have. We then put together the menu accordingly,” says Rejhon, who has also started growing his own edibles in the hotel’s backyard flowers. His calendula and pansy are blooming right now.
Sustainability also applies to broken dishes. He does not throw it away, but repairs it according to the old Japanese Kincugi technique, which is nicknamed the “golden connection”. It consists in joining broken dishes with glue, which is sprinkled with gold dust at the joint. “I like that you both bring ceramics back to life and create an original piece. It’s about finding a kind of hidden, imperfect beauty, when at the same time you create something that is inimitable,” describes Rejhon. They hide the broken plates in crates and then glue them together in quiet moments.
Tags: David Rejhon Artisan restaurant environmental sustainability restaurants gastronomy
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