When I launched hautdegamme.net in 2014, one of the things I believed most strongly was that the people doing the work should also have the space to speak. Not through press releases or through carefully managed interviews, but in their own voice, on their own terms. Chefs wrote, and I published: Mauro Colagreco, Virgilio Martinez, Rodolfo Guzman, Isaac McHale, Christian Puglisi and many others who were and still are shaping how we eat and think about food.
Then life, work, and clients took over, and that voice faded from the platform.
I am opening it again. Not just to chefs this time, but to anyone genuinely embedded in this food world. Restaurateurs, managers, sommeliers, farmers, food producers, journalists. If you have a perspective on food and hospitality that goes beyond the surface, this is a place for it.
The first piece comes from Carlos Henriques, founder of Nolla in Helsinki. He just won a Sustainability and Innovation award from Falstaff Nordics this week and, instead of writing a gracious thank-you post, he asked a harder question: what does it mean when the label defines you more than the work?
It is a question I recognise. The same thing happened to Silo in London for years. Douglas McMaster was doing genuinely radical things with food, yet coverage always led with the compost, rarely with the plate. The sustainability frame was accurate, but it kept reducing a complete culinary vision to a single virtue signal.
We need to talk about this. And if you are working in food and hospitality and have something true to say (on any subject), please write to me.
Winning a sustainability award is great. But I don’t like it.
Last Monday, the 23rd of March, I received the Sustainability & Innovation award from Falstaff Nordics, one of the most respected restaurant and food guides in Europe.
I was happy. Of course I was. I went there to collect this prize on behalf of the team. This is not my award. It belongs to the people who show up every day and make Nolla what it is. Ten years of hard decisions, real commitment, and a group of people who believed in this from the beginning. It feels good when someone notices.
But then I started thinking. And I could not stop.
This is not the first time we have won something like this. Nolla has been recognised for sustainability since we opened in 2019. We get called a zero-waste restaurant. We get invited to panels about food waste. We get articles written about our composting, our reusable containers, and our recycled uniforms. And all of that is true. We do all of that, and we are proud of it.
But nobody asks us about the food. Not really. Not the way they ask other restaurants.
Nobody writes about the fermentation program, the wine list we have been building, or the way we think about flavour, texture, and balance on a plate. When people come to Nolla with a sustainability lens, that is all they see. I understand it. We built that story ourselves. We opened as a zero-waste restaurant, and that label stuck. And yes, we stand on the shoulders of giants, but we have also been pioneers in the way we work and the way we think. There are only a handful of restaurants in the world that support each other at the same level on this. So I understand why it defines us. But it is not all we are, confusing, right?
There is a great article in MAD called “The Zero Waste Communication Conundrum.” Albert, my co-founder, was actually part of the conversation that led to that piece. The problem they describe is exactly this: restaurants that are deeply committed to responsibility often struggle to be seen as great restaurants first. Sustainability becomes the headline, and the food becomes a footnote.
Here is the truth. Sustainability, or responsibility as we like to call it, is not our main goal. It never was. Our main goal is to serve great food, great drinks, and great hospitality. And also, if I am being fully honest, to make sure the restaurant actually works as a business in the society we live in. Because if we cannot pay salaries, that is not responsible either.
Responsibility is the framework, not the product. We do not want guests to come to Nolla to feel virtuous. We want them to come because they want a good evening, because they want to eat well, to see people, to be seen. Hosting people is honestly my favourite part of this job.
I also think about something we believed when we started. We imagined that in ten years, so many restaurants would have strong responsibility values that people would stop looking at Nolla through that lens. That we would just be another restaurant in a group of businesses that understood the environment as a core value, the same way no one puts flavour above experience, or staff wellbeing above financial health. They all play a role. None sits alone at the top.
That did not happen as fast as we hoped, but I still have hope; it’s the last thing to die, I guess, which explains why we keep opening restaurants.
Another thought I had is that if you know you will never win the lottery, you stop playing. Because the recognition for responsibility in restaurants is so limited, many places do not even try to compete. I am sure there are restaurants with good intentions that just need a small push. A little acknowledgement that they are trying. Because there is no single formula for responsibility. We need many approaches, including yours.
So I accept this award with real gratitude in the name of Nolla. Falstaff is a serious guide, and being recognised across the Nordics means something. But if you have never been to Nolla, please come for the food. Come for the drinks. Come because you want a good evening in Helsinki.
The responsibility part, you will discover along the way.
For you reading right now, I would genuinely love to hear other opinions on this. Because I know we need to do better, and I do not think I can figure it out alone.
Feel free to DM us your thoughts.
