Greenhouse – 09 May 2014

After dreaming of visiting this place, I finally got the opportunity to see this magical, sustainable restaurant that Matt Stone is famous for. Seeing the permanent structure also made me appreciate just how much effort went into the Sydney popup: no lights so everything was candle powered, all served on wooden plates, wooden cutlery, tables and chairs made from old posters that I remember seeing all over the city. Perth still needed lights to survive and metal cutlery for the food, but they had chairs made of old roadwork signs, all wooden things made from recycled wood, and the door handles made from old gigantic plastic things. I’m also fairly convinced that I saw an old shovel as the handle to the door to the stairs of the rooftop bar.

The pictures here are from two visits, a lunch and a breakfast.

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Greenhouse by Joost! – 13 March 2011

 

Greenhouse by Joost was a special pop-up in Sydney, at the picturesque Circular Quay, with a view of the Harbour Bridge, Opera House, as well as tall ships as they sailed past. It featured in MasterChef in a challenge of minimising waste, but I had first heard about it after Matt Stone featured on an episode of Iron Chef Australia. Being a zero waste program, I was very interested to see the philosophies transformed into a viable dining venture – this was the closest I was going to get, short of travelling to Perth and visiting the actual Greenhouse.

It was just a green rectangular pop up by the water’s edge, accompanied with a shed that was covered in a mural of orange butterflies. Close up, the green walls were made of countless strawberry plants in pots, some of them flowering happily in the sunshine. There were no lights on the inside, relying on natural light, and beeswax tealights after sunset.
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