Designers and foodies all over the world are coming coming up with a myriad of ways to join savory with sustainability. The German design geniuses at Hamburg’s Korefe created a cookbook with a lasagne recipe that is printed on pasta (pictured above) and can be filled and cooked. It’s as simple as read, cook and eat. Not for chefs, however, who need to doublecheck cooking times.
While certainly one of the most delicious, the edible cookbook is not the first object made to be used and eaten. Chicago chef Honaro Cantu used edible menus when he opened Moto, as did Grant Achatz at his world-famous Alinea in that same city’s Lincoln Park neighborhood.
At some places you might be able to literally clean up your plate. Rice Designs has produced biscuit-dough chopsticks and bowls for Japan’s Orto Cafe. It’s also possible to get your veggies in edible art. Dutch artist Geke Wouters has created beautiful bowls in which you can serve carrots and then continue to consume the bowl itself made of beets, leeks and tomatoes:
In case it’s not enough to read your meal and eat it, too, there’s no need to stop at cookbooks, menus and utensils when it comes to satisfying your hunger. There’s a plan for a new restaurant in Los Angeles with edible parts. Sander Architects has designed a restaurant around the idea of a building you can eat. The plan calls for the cafe’s vertical walls to be covered with herbs and fruits that customers and passers-by can pluck and consume. No word on whether you are responsible for harvesting you own lunch ingredients if you choose to eat in.
American waistlines may not need the calories of edible objects, but the global need for sustainability insures this will be a continuing trend.
