British-born bartender and sustainability advocate Matt Whiley is stood behind the W Hotel’s Living Room Bar getting ready to delicately tweeze blackened pumpkin seeds onto a cocktail. “This is something that I think should exist in every bar in the world,” he tells Broadsheet.
Whiley has co-founded nine award-winning bars, including Scout in London and Re, which is slated to re-open in Sydney soon. He has made waves for spearheading a movement to increase sustainability and use waste items in the food and drink scene.
For his six-month pop-up at the W Hotel, he worked with its kitchens to identify ingredients that are often wasted. The new menu incorporates potato skins, pineapple rind, pumpkin seeds, cauliflower cream and carrot peel into the cocktail menu.
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SUBSCRIBE NOWThe cocktail menu includes the Re Lamington Negroni, raspberry Fords gin, coconut oil, cacao-husk vermouth and Campari, topped with a shard of chocolate; Seed Money, which uses blackened pumpkin seeds, heavy cream-distilled Fords gin and vermouth; the Shroom Service, which creates a nutty earthy mix with onion ash, mushroom honey and pineapple skin with Herradura tequila and shio koji; and the Malt Disney, a dark cocktail with a burnt potato skin and carrot vinegar caramel mixed with Glendronach 12-year-old whisky and Absolut Elyx vodka to create a warming cocktail with a malt cloud finish.
“I would love to see this in every W in the world,” Whiley says. “It makes sense. Hotels are generally on the more wasteful side, but just because of the amount of people that come through it and how they have to cater for their guests. But if we can, we can do things to help reduce that waste. It’s certainly going to be good for the environment.”
The sustainability angle goes beyond drinks to menus on recycled paper, Re’s signature coasters made from recycled plastic, and food waste is either composted on-site or donated to Oz Harvest.
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