Brent McLeod, the former under 16bs coach and my Dad, still says to me that I went to St Bede’s to make friends and eat lunch…wouldn’t say that’s exactly right, but it’s certainly not wrong. I now find myself on exactly the other side of the World, a couple of weeks into opening my first restaurant called SEM in Lisbon, Portugal.

After leaving Christchurch, I spent a bit of time in Perth and then onto London for a few years where I worked around in some pretty heavy kitchens before finding my calling as Head Chef of Silo, the world’s first zero waste restaurant. Throughout my time in kitchens, I was always furious with the amount of waste and lack of care taken in trying to keep things from ending up in the landfill.

I met my partner Lara in London and she also ended up working at Silo. She also has a Masters in Sustainability and Social Development, which took my passion/aggression to another level.

In March 2020, the virus started and closed things down in London and we knew we had to get out of our East London basement flat with no windows. We tossed up coming home or heading to Portugal. For me it was easy, a summer in Portugal. After landing a job cooking in a beach shack and serving natural wines in Comporta, an hour south of Lisbon, we saw an opportunity to open Portugal’s first zero waste restaurant.

Portugal is a country which has gone through extremely trying times and had high levels of poverty throughout their history. This has made the cuisine relatively zero waste. We have things like bread and Pork fat sausages, soaked and refried old bread and over 1000 different types of pastries, which only use egg, sugar and cinnamon. The problem now is that because for such a long time, eating was rough, when the industrial revolution hit here, things went wild. Plastic everywhere and an abundance of chemically grown food. They never looked back.

What we are doing is the opposite. We only work with regenerative agricultural projects and natural wines. We use no plastic, or even have a bin in the restaurant. Working directly with farmers here is logistically extremely tough as they love a long lunch and don’t care too much for deadlines! 

But we do not compromise at all and we have to deal with what we can get which means the menu is for ever changing throughout the micro seasons as a plant does in the wild. Some people think that we’re doing it because it’s trendy right now, which is very handy to be fair, but the truth is we do it because we know that although the restaurant industry is extremely destructive, it’s also one based on creativity, which means once a chef has the tools, there is no excuse for ever needing a bin…I have the tools, so it’s time for us to prove it before we spread the word! Wish us luck! Thanks for the inclusion into the newsletter, it really does mean a lot!

Take care old boys, would be great to see a Bedean walk through the doors of SEM restaurant!