Latest News

Mexico City restaurant combines ancient agriculture and zero waste

Baldio is a vine-covered restaurant in Mexico City’s trendy Condesa district. In English, it means barren. The zero-waste concept has made it a popular restaurant. This means that all leftovers and scraps of food are reused.

Since it received a Michelin Green Star in June for its innovative sustainability concept, the restaurant that opened in 2024, seats 52, is regularly packed. Baldio owners claim it's the first zero waste restaurant in Mexico City.

Baldio serves gourmet Mexican cuisine, including yellow corn tamal, Mexican sweet corn salad, cured buffalo meat and smoked butter sauce, as well as grilled sweet onions, grasshoppers, and hibiscus-infused dressing.

Pablo Usobiaga said that the name of the restaurant is a rejection to the idea of "control, efficiency, and profitability" as the most important aspects in our lives. It is a way to challenge the status quo, which is profitability and total control.

Fruit peels and fish remains are fermented to create a Mexican traditional fermented beverage. Onion scraps are also fermented, until they become a powdery seasoning.

Baldio sources all of its ingredients within 125 miles of the restaurant to reduce carbon emissions. Most of the ingredients come from a variety of floating farms located on a network of canals that run through southern Mexico City.

Chinampas are floating farms that were built by Aztec farmers a thousand-years ago to grow food all year round.

Lucio Usobiaga, Usobiaga's younger brother, began working with local farmers 15 years ago, helping them to preserve centuries-old farming practices such as the use of special fermentation techniques and organic fertilisers.

Baldio chefs visit Xochimilco every week to explore local crops and meet farmers. Flowers are added to negronis, honey-based fermented beverages and warm infusions. Menus are changed every week according to the harvest and season.

Lucio said that the restaurant needs a creative mind to adapt to changing harvests. He said that the excitement of doing things in this way is what drives them. (Reporting and editing by Emily Green, Lincoln Feast, and Mariana Hernandez.)

(source: Reuters)