Unlike a few other Cape Town restaurants we won’t name, The Test Kitchen is making an effort to implement changes to its menu, and practices, in an effort to combat the Western Cape’s drought.

Yay – but we wouldn’t expect anything less from one of the best restaurants in the country.

According to Business Tech, The Test Kitchen’s water saving methods include using melted ice bucket water for cleaning the floors, and fitting water saving taps, it said in a statement alongside Western Cape MEC Alan Winde, on Monday.

If your favourite restaurant is still refusing to serve you a glass of water for free, then you might have to have a conversation with them about the many other legal ways they can conserve water.

Because, you know they have to serve free water if they have a liquor licence, right? Read more on that boiling topic here.

Luke Dale-Roberts, chef and owner of The Test Kitchen, has even go so far as to change the menu:

Roberts has also designed a menu that uses minimal water to prepare. To do this, he’s reduced the amount of blanching, stocks and sauces required to produce his dishes.

The new six-course menu, which also includes three snacks, will cost R690 per person – excluding wines – and will be the only menu served. Diners can also choose a tea-, gourmand wine- or iconic wine-pairing to accompany the dishes.

But there’s more.

Diners at ‘The Drought Kitchen’ – clever – will have their food served to them in a wooden frame, on compostable cardboard that is slipped out between courses:

The wooden frames have been specially made for the restaurant by Castle Framers, a local Woodstock frame maker which has been in the area for three generations, the group said.

Not only have guests been requested to keep the same cutlery for all six courses, but the restaurant has also done away with its tablecloths and cloth napkins, which were “previously laundered six days a week in the in-house laundry, which serviced all of Roberts’ restaurants”:

“We realised that everything you do to conserve water has an impact on people’s jobs, so we’ve taken two of the four (laundry workers) and trained them to do vegetable prep for the Pot Luck Club,” Roberts said.

Roberts said the largest water usage in his restaurant came from the dish washer, and switching to the frames instead of plates, saves on washing 5,000 dishes per week.

If you’re keen to get in on the experience, The Drought Kitchen will run from Tuesday to Saturday from April 1 until the end of May, so make your booking soon.

All we have to say on that topic is save water, drink wine.

[source:businesstech]