Lowe’s commitment to sustainability has resulted in it winning a green Michelin star and the title of Sustainable Restaurant 2022 at MENA’s 50 Best. We find out why
Located far from the madding crowd in Dubai’s Al Barari, Lowe was always an ‘in-the-know’ favourite, but has shot to the top of culinary connoisseurs’ minds this year. The restaurant was presented with two sustainable-focused awards this year, winning the title of Sustainable Restaurant Award 2022 at the inaugural MENA’s 50 Best as well as a Michelin Green Star in the guide’s first iteration in Dubai.
Chef and restaurateur Kate Christou and partner Jesse Blake, with the blessings of the owner, embarked on a path to develop a restaurant where sustainability was a given rather than a selling point. Kate and Jesse asked themselves: “If we were going to build our dream restaurant, what would it be?”
The answer to that question opened its doors in March 2019, where everything is cooked over fire (Lowe has a rotisserie, a grill and a wood-fired oven) and the vibe is one of being in someone’s cosy home. “It’s a place you could visit in gym gear, but also come in high heels. Everyone is welcome,” adds Kate.
She admits it was a slow start when they first moved to the UAE from Australia, when it came to getting their name out in the market as a home-grown brand. Eventually, however, word of mouth meant that people started flocking to the restaurant. Even then, Lowe’s sustainable credentials were not something that they trumpeted from the rooftops.
Kate says, “In Australia, when you’re cheffing, sustainability is at the core of what you do anyway. It’s all about the local produce. So, we already came with that ethos.”
From the beginning, Lowe was a zero-plastic zone, with a ban on all single-use plastic, along with all the packaging being compostable. “This caused problems: people were complaining about water being expensive because we wouldn’t do plastic bottles – and now it’s very common,” adds Kate. Other initiatives Lowe follows are composting ingredients such as eggshells, along with takeaway coffee cups being completely banned. Opening hours have already reduced significantly for the venue to be open when it’s the busiest, thereby reducing running costs of air conditioning and lights, and Kate says this has been one of the biggest impacts in terms of saving energy.
But it goes beyond that. Kate says, “When we weren’t so busy, we had waste. That’s when we started to create ‘Waste Not’ dinners. We began freezing leftover pastries, the rinds from when we’d make fresh orange juice, or other such things. We started to look at everything and think, ‘how can we use this somewhere else so that we don’t have this waste issue?’”
Priced at 99 AED, Lowe’s team created eight to 10-course menus, which got the foodie scene talking. “We received plenty of interest from that. It was also time to be really creative, educate our team and get them to buy into everything that we had been already pushing.”
The consequence of these menus was that the team started looking at the menu with a fresh set of eyes. Kate explains, “We realised that all these ‘waste’ items are good enough to go on the menu. So now we’ve reached a point where we don’t have much waste because we’ve designed a menu that is completely circular.” While it’s no longer one of Lowe’s offerings, one popular dish from the Waste Not menu was burnt sourdough ice cream. Instead of throwing away burnt toast, these were turned into delicious ice cream.
Kate says Lowe goes a step further in its quest towards being sustainable. “For us, sustainability is also about employee well-being and the social responsibility that we have as a business.
“All our staff work five days, far fewer hours than everywhere else. We pay above average. We have amazing employee well-being programmes: they have access to a gym, swimming pool, they can access all the facilities in NASAB. We’re in the midst of developing a much bigger employee well-being programme. This is also part of sustainability. Then we have a social responsibility, too, and we are very philanthropic,” Kate says.
“It’s not a marketing thing for us. It’s not even on our website, it’s not in our blurb about who we are.”
The next step for Lowe is its own vegetable garden, which is slated to being planted in October 2022. “We are getting tomatoes, aubergines and some herbs [to begin with]. I’m considering – but I don’t know if it’s feasible – having no lights and dining by candlelight.”
Kate reiterates the belief that this was all just part of the ethos. “We never set out to be a sustainable concept. It happened naturally because it’s so ingrained in everything that we do. Over the course of time we have become known for it. We’re just doing it because we believe we have a responsibility – for no other reason to be honest. There were none of these awards back then, either.”
She continues, “We are not doing it for the awards or the recognition, but of course, in any profession, it is an amazing feeling to be recognised by your peers and colleagues for what you’re doing. It’s definitely been a huge career highlight.”
The awards won’t change anything about their ethos. “We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing, which is good quality food, good quality produce and a creative menu with service.”
