My Dinner with André

Lower Mainland restaurants go green

by SPRING GILLARD

I had dinner with André. André LaRivière. Former CBC Radio producer. Chef and local food writer. Member of the Vancouver Food Policy Council. And now the executive director of Green Table Network, a non-profit that helps restaurants go green and then certifies them.

André is also the father of Pascale, the four-year-old who gave us colour commentary throughout the meal. The delicate saffron rice was too yellow, the thick and satisfying corn and potato soup not yellow enough. The ratatouille, well, that was just plain fun to say when you’re bilingue and you’ve just seen the animated film of the same name starring a rat aspiring to be a chef.

In 1996, upon turning 40, André decided it was time for an adventure. He left CBC and enrolled at the French Culinary Institute in New York City. After graduating, his instructors encouraged him to go to the South of France to hone his skills. He landed a job at a quaint bistro just north of Cannes on the Côte d’Azur.

“We used to get movie stars coming in all the time,” he said. “Gina Davis, Uma Thurman, Quentin Tarantino.”

“Papa used to cook for dogs,” Pascale cut in, bursting the bubble.

André laughed. The rich and famous used to ask him to cook up “un plat pour Fifi, s’il vous plait.” So he often found himself frying up liver and other delicacies for les chiens.

After a year in France, he spent the next couple of years in Toronto writing for various food industry magazines and building connections with chefs across the country. When he landed in Vancouver in 2000 he wrote about food issues for the Georgia Straight and City Food. He was covering the Bioneers Conference (a leading-edge environmental forum) in California when he first encountered the idea of a green-certification program for restaurants, developed by Ritu Primlani of Thimmakka Resources for Environmental Education (thimmakka.org) in Berkeley. On his return to Vancouver, he secured a license from Primlani, and then adapted her program to create the Green Table Network.

In the summer of 2006, André launched a pilot program with a dozen Lower Mainland restaurants, including Raincity Grill, West, and Vij’s. Each restaurant was assessed from top to bottom, and then given a report that outlined what kind of measures it could take to become Green Table Network certified.
“We look at everything, from the lights out front to the bins at the kitchen door,” said André. To qualify for certification, a restaurant must achieve a score of 25 per cent in the following five categories: solid waste/recycling, energy conservation, water conservation, pollution prevention, and sustainable purchasing (which includes using local food). The Network then comes up with an implementation plan to help the restaurant achieve its goals.

“Within a week we had composting set up and we’d reduced our water use in the kitchen pit by three-quarters,” said Suzanne Fielden of Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company. “What I like about Green Table is they put us in touch with the products and the experts we need to make it happen. And our customers love what we’re doing.”

André says margins in the food service industry are tight. “We wanted to help businesses become greener and save money.”

That appeals to Don Letendre, executive chef at Elixir in the Opus Hotel: “It’s not about being more green than the guy down the street or just doing the right thing; it’s about measuring what you’re doing and seeing the cost savings as well.”

According to André, the pilot identified gaps in the supply chain and the food system. For example, local organic food is not yet available in case lots, so larger scale restaurants have to do without. And there are still some glitches with composting pick-up services.

“We provide a service for corporate clients who are embracing green,” says André, “but we also want to help develop a more sustainable food system across the board. There is opportunity for us to help develop that system.”

In May, Green Table Network was officially launched. They currently have 40 members, including food caterers and a chain, the Cactus Club Café. Initial membership and assessment costs $595, and it’s $300 a year after that (which includes an annual reassessment). Their goal is to have 200 new members by June 2008. Green Table window stickers identify members.

So just how green was my dinner with André? Well, the produce was all bought at a local farmers’ market that morning. We sipped B.C. wine. We used cloth napkins. There was a composter in the backyard. Tomatoes, beans, and basil were growing on the deck. And thanks to Pascale’s keen eye for colour during a family trip to Ikea, we dined at a green patio table. Full marks.

Spring Gillard is the author of Diary of a Compost Hotline Operator: Edible Essays on City Farming (New Society, 2003). Find out more about Green Table at greentable.net.

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