MAD Monday at the Hammer
Photo by Stefanie Keenan/ Getty Images for Audi
MAD is the Danish word for food. MAD is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. MAD is stark raving…. MAD is the brainchild of Rene Rezdepi, chef of Noma, arguably the best restaurant of the world. MAD Academy is a school for people who work in hospitality that focuses on making you do better, be better.
On Monday night, in the hot pink theater at the Hammer Museum, a good slice of LA’s food scene showed up for MAD Monday, a talk sponsored by forward-thinking electric carmaker, Audi. We’re talking chefs (big ones, like Alice Waters and Minh Phan) as well as food journalists and alumnae and crazy people obsessed with saving the planet. The restaurant industry is, of course, on the front lines in so many things, like reintroducing biodiversity into the system, and like rethinking food, hunger and waste.
What was particularly inspiring was a talk Douglas McMasters gave. As the chef and founder of Silo, a zero-waste restaurant in London, he told us about his journey from here to there.
McMasters is not a big person. With his work boots, black jeans and silver jewelry, he seems like a counter-culture envoy from an alternative realm. Shifting his weight back and forth, he told us he was dyslexic and did badly in school until an epiphany arrived while cutting off what must have been his thousandth pig’s face on the line in a Michelin-starred restaurant: he had to do better for the planet and fast. His solution was both simple and complicated: do away with “the bin,” or the trash.
He went on to tell us all about Silo, which has its own Michelin star, this one in green for closed loop and zero waste. The place sounds like a marvel, with plates made out of used plastic bags, lights made out of repurposed raw glass, bar tops of plastic waste and even furniture grown from fungi.
McMasters showed us how the meal begins with a slice of sourdough (hand-milled) and butter (freshly churned) and ends with an ice cream sandwich from the bran of the sourdough, the buttermilk from the butter, and a “marmite caramel” from fermenting the bread crusts. Whole ingredients. Full circle. We came away wondering why, oh why is all this mummifying packaging we live with so ubiquitous? What is our relationship to waste? (I fell asleep that night imagining a huge field where I stood beside the mountain of everything I’d ever used and thrown away, from computers to clothes to paper to plastic and on and on. And much of this stuff never degrades).
Afterwards everyone crowded into the courtyard for Guelaguetza’s deep and complex tamale de mole, Lulu’s perfect tomatoes caprese on perfect bread, Doubting Thomas’ passionately intense passionfruit tart, Bridgetown Roti’s Caribbean patties and Luv2Eat Thai Bistro’s sinus-clearing-spicy fireworks. It made you proud to be from LA.
It also make us think it would be a fantastic idea to check out the LA Scholars Award that Audi is offering. Five days in Copenhagen, all expenses paid, for a 5 day MAD intensive on Leadership and Business or Environment and Sustainability. Blonde wood, lyrical design, five days of hanging with fellow hospitable people talking about the future of the planet and how we can do better. Here’s where to apply.