Move Over Organic Food, The Next Restaurant Trend Is Restorative Dining

A new food movement in California is attempting to reduce carbon footprints in restaurants and make meals more climate friendly by tacking on a surcharge to fund a pilot called Restore California.

Food writer Corby Kummer told Boston Public Radio on Tuesday the program is just one system of numerous programs across the country to help restaurants be more sustainable.

"This is saying if every restaurant in the Bay Area … if they could put a one percent surcharge that goes toward regenerative soil, which is caring about making the soil better for future generations, that’s even better than organic, that’s what matters now, so this Restore California 1 percent surcharge, fancy restaurants are going along with it, they’re getting with the program."

Kummer said the fine dining restaurants are serving dishes like beef tartare sourced with meat from a ranch affiliated with a program to help fields absorb more carbon, local lavender, and toast created from Kernza, a "perennial grain with deep roots that helps restore prairie land."

Corby Kummer is executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.