Silo Is Trying To Create London’s First Fish Sauce – And Stop Food Waste, To Boot

We have a global problem with food waste, and this is felt acutely in the fishing industry, where up to 35 percent of its harvest is ultimately discarded. To this end, Silo’s Fermentation Factory has radical ambition: could koji-grains repurpose would-be waste, keep nutrients in the system, and – maybe – produce London’s first fish sauce? And could fermented condiments be the (delicious) solution to reducing food waste? Tessa Dunthorne rocks up to the Hackney restaurant to see what’s been brewing.

Inside Silo’s Fermentation Factory – How We Solve Food Waste

You’d be forgiven for mistaking Silo’s Fermentation Factory for the Breaking Bad set. This Hackney Wick space in a shipping container is replete with heavy-duty sanitary curtains over the door, vats bubbling away in the corner, and don’t even think about not wearing a hairnet. It is, of course, more legal than Walter White’s lab. Its steward Ryan Walker – head of fermentation at Silo, the zero-waste restaurant just down the canal and a cool skateboarder-type, is cooking up something unique here, though – that parallel holds.

‘We’re growing a fungus called “koji”, or aspergillus oryzae, which grows on grains,’ he explains. ‘When cultivated, it forms a useful cocktail of enzymes, which when applied to hard-to-digest foods like soybeans, unlocks their nutritional potential… And holds infinite potential for upcycling into soy-like sauces, misos and so on, targeting food industry waste such as spent-brewers grain and whey.’

Ferments are having a hot moment – the science affirms that it bolsters gut health – but Ryan, with blessing from Silo’s chef-owner Doug McMaster, isn’t hopping on a trend. Rather, they’re determined to keep food waste (and its nutrients) in the system for longer, by fermenting it. At Silo, they’ve been using ferments for years as a means of concentrating flavour. The Fermentation Factory is their first attempt to scale something that works for the restaurant and make it commercially available. 

‘This project is as scalable as the waste out there,’ says Ryan. ‘Right now the most abundant and reliable human supply chain we’ve created is waste. We’re aiming to intercept as much of it as we can to turn it into products that are already used in huge quantities.’

Doug is palpably ambitious. ‘Just think: anywhere that there’s concentrated food waste… Like a bread factory. If you could bring that waste to a koji factory – or the koji to the waste – that’s my dream.’

He adds that this includes having exciting conversations with the global fishing industry: ‘Currently 35 percent of what goes through fishing companies is wasted, which – considering our depleting oceans – is horrific. Imagine if we could work with a fish supplier to deal with this quantity of fish carcasses… If we could use koji to upcycle that waste into, say, a London fish sauce, also mitigating how much we need to import from Asia… How amazing would that be?’

Turning waste into common condiments? What’s not to love. Let the fermenting begin.