The Sustainability of Emmer & Rye

This year Emmer & Rye turns nine. Sustainability is more than a word at Emmer, it's at the heart of our mission and many of the practices we do at E&R have become foundational for our group and other concepts. As we look toward a new decade of service, we reflect on the strategies that keep us going, and we pay respect to the challenges we overcame to get here.

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Trosi Farms was founded in 2020 by Will Nikkel. The farm is in partnership with ERHG restaurants, allowing our chef team to work closely with Will for unique and delicious produce.

A history of overcoming the status quo

When we opened in 2015, our goal was to create a space that worked hand in hand with farmers, ranchers and growers in the region. Nine years ago this was a bit of a flip to the status quo. We all know that most crops do not grow year-round, yet menus are often designed like they are. This results in food traveling long distances so menu items don’t have to change. That food is harvested early to make the journey and as food travels, it breaks down. As it breaks down it simply tastes less delicious and has less nutritional value. If a restaurant’s goal is to create food that tastes great wouldn't we want to use the freshest and closest product?

A relationship though, is two-sided, and in the small farm community, chefs can have a bad rap. Chefs are known for only wanting the best cuts or products, they want them at a certain price, and if their food cost starts to get out of hand the first thing to go is a premium-priced small farm. This can leave farms in vulnerable spaces often scrambling to sell products which means, that if they can build their revenue models without restaurants, it might be a lot easier for them.

This nuanced history meant that at the beginning of Emmer’s life, farmers and ranchers were apprehensive to work with us. They kept saying we would talk next year and politely ignored our calls. Eventually through lots of persistence (and a bit of pleading) they decided to give us a try. Once we had the initial buy-in it was our job to keep the relationship. This meant thinking of a menu that worked both for them and us.

What does it mean to have a restaurant that operates sustainably?

To implement our vision of working truly seasonally and locally, preservation and waste reduction are fundamental to our success as a restaurant. Here are just a few of our strategies:

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Texas First

At Emmer & Rye, we only use what is from Texas to flavor our dishes. This means our spice cabinet is a bit limited and we need to look towards other ingredients to develop similar flavor profiles. We utilize the dried tops of leeks for allium notes, or roots of lettuce for thickening and earthy, or sugar-fermented parsnip skins to make vanillin compounds.

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Percentage and Palate-Driven

What the heck does that mean? As we know, weather is a thing in Texas! Weather effects flavor resulting in ingredients that are constantly changing. To truly utilize the items above, we cannot make recipes that are followed to the gram. This makes our kitchen work off of percentages and palates much more than a traditional restaurant.

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Fans of Fermentation

We LOVE fermentation! Fermentation has been used for centuries as a way to preserve seasons. Our goal is to constantly apply fermentation techniques from all over the world to create interesting ingredients we can play with.

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Use Every Part

We are exclusively whole animal and fish, the lard is used to confit, the bones to make incredible broths, even the skin is used as a serving or to thicken sauces.

WAIT! DON'T WASTE IT!

At Emmer & Rye our fermentation cabinet is a treasure trove of off-season wonders allowing us to reduce waste and expand the use of often discarded scrap ingredients. Here's a few ways we save, ferment, and apply other preservation techniques in our kitchen:

Herbs

We use remaining herbs at the end of each week and turn them into vinegars.

Vegetable Top and Skins

We add our vegetable tops and skins into a lactic brine that then is used to make sauces or add umami to items

Winter Storage Wonders

We dehydrate chiles for use in the winter. Blacken fruits, acorns, nuts, and allium to preserve the bounty of the season allowing us to explore more later.

Egg Whites

As you know, we produce a lot of pasta at Emmer & Rye, so we have an excess of Egg Whites. We have turned those into an amino sauce since we opened 9 years ago.

Create a Cocktail

Our beverage menu takes the same approach as the kitchen. The cocktails use vinegars made in house or blackened fruits. We make our bitters from wild Texas ingredients. We preserve cherries from the Texas/Oklahoma Border for our bar cherries. While we don't make wine, our wine program highlights sustainable and biodynamic producers.

Tomatoes

All cut tomatoes that are not used during service are fermented and then strained as lactic tomato water, we also take the sediment as a lactic tomato paste to thicken.

Smoke It

We smoke and dry mushroom scrap and fish to preserve the product and add flavor to sauces and broths.

Leftover Bread

We make Kvass and bread amino from leftover breads

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How do we keep ourselves accountable?

Emmer & Rye spends 90%+ of all our food dollars within the state of Texas on a blended average. Our goal is to spend our money with small farms growing things in our state. In order to make sure we are holding true to this, we audit ourselves. We audit for 4 stages:

  • Stage 1: within 100 miles and small independent
  • Stage 2: Within Texas
  • Stage 3: Regional
  • Stage 4: Other

By auditing, This keeps our fuel footprint and farming practices footprint center stage in sourcing. In addition, since 2019, we have partnered with Zero Foodprint to audit and offset our carbon in the restaurant. Zero Foodprint funds regenerative farming practices in California and Colorado.

We are incredibly proud of what our team does every day to ensure that we are honoring the bounty of Texas. A lot of these practices have become a foundation for our group and are replicated at all other ERHG restaurants. In April of 2024, we opened Pullman Market in San Antonio that utilizes the principles of sustainability on a grander and more robust scale.

In November 2024, Emmer & Rye was awarded a Green Star for sustainability. We are one of 32 green stars in the United States. Supporting farmers and ranchers is what we believe in, because at the end of the day, Texas is our home.