I Went To A 300-Person Party Catered With Food Taken From The Trash, And It Was Delicious

This past summer, recent School of Visual Arts grad Josh Treuhaft drew headlines for his buzzy Salvage Supperclub, which treated attendees to a gourmet dinner held in a dumpster in Brooklyn. The location was chosen to draw attention to the source of the dinner's ingredients, food that quite literally would have otherwise ended up in the trash.

In the US, 133 billion pounds of uneaten food - nearly one-third of all the food America produces - is tossed in the garbage every year.

Treuhaft started his supper club not only to draw attention to this, but also to highlight the ways that regular people could take action by appreciating, and eating, the aging food that they normally throw away.

Salvage Supper, which has been held five times over the last several months, is evolving into a a full-fledged business. Treuhaft and his chef Celia Lam were recently contracted to cater a 300-person party for the engineering firm Arup, where Treuhaft now works.

For the party, the team traded traditional hors d'oeuvres like deviled eggs and meatballs for high-class fare like beet tartare and curried squash shooters, all created from salvaged food. The goal: to educate party-goers about how food is being wasted, and how to save it.