A very well behaved restaurant

I can cross it off my To do list. I've dined at Sydney's temporary restaurant called Greenhouse by Joost. It's a sustainable building characterised by three orange shipping containers and a living/edible wall of stacked strawberries. The inside is tasteful and fresh, going for a very hip style. The interior walls were white with black scrawled words  describing food, sustainability and the restaurant. From what I could see there were no lights, so when daylight was no more, they brought out tea light candles for each table. It was back to basics. 

Photo by my sister's friend.

Everything looked like it was made from recycled materials. The floor was black rubber, I'm guessing recycled tires. The chairs were constructed of a roughly welded steel frame with a leather backing and seat. They were not very comfortable. The tables tops looked as if they were constructed of old signs. The drinking glasses were jars and the beer glasses were the bottom half of an old beer bottle melted at the rim, making it look like resin (hello Dinosaur Design). Plates were not plates but squared off pieces of plywood. The cutlery was also timber. We wondered why, since they couldn't be reused and trees would had have to been knocked down to make them. The place became really packed as dinner time set in. 

The menu was equally healthy, consisting of an assortment of vegetables that looked like they had been picked straight from the garden out back. We had fried cauliflower with spices. It was presented in a newspaper cone sitting in a large jar, reminding me of popcorn for some reason. Then came the baby carrots, presented on a plywood board, a quinoa salad with radishes and finally lamb. We didn't have individual plates, our waitress explained that they had ran out (of plywood I presume) and it was a opportunity to share food with one another.  Very communal. So that's what we did. It was very loving. The meals were a good example of healthy eating and looking after our bodies and the planet. 

It would be nice to think that the temporary construction could fit into those three shipping containers and be transported to another place. But I ruled that out since the containers had great big squares cut out of the side to make a door way to the kitchen and other service spaces. Nevertheless, the orientation of the building was right, smaller facades facing the east and west and large facades to the north and south with large windows on the north and limited openings on the south. I'm not too sure about the living  walls. Sure the walls are edible, but many of the strawberries had died. I think it was just a means of making the building 'look' more sustainable. Anyway, the customer's were endless it seemed and we all got exposed to sustainable design and healthy eating.