Surprise Guests, Kale Rib Stew, and Brodo Bombs at Dan Barber's Food Waste Pop-Up

Reservations for the first dinner (a week from today) at Dan Barber's WastED pop-up are now live and probably won't be around for long. Barber is suspending dinner service at his Greenwich Village farm-to-table mecca Blue Hill to host the pop-up, where a slew of all-star chefs like Grant Achatz, Danny Bowien, Mario Batali, Dominique Crenn, and Alain Ducasse, will be cooking dinner with ingredients that are usually dumped in the trash. Think carrot tops, pickle butts, and kale ribs. "I want to use a chef's creativity and technique to transform ingredients that we don't think of as edible and delicious and turn them into something that's coveted," Barber told Eater.

Complete menus and a full schedule are still being finalized, but Barber's team tells Eater a couple more dishes are already decided: a stew of kale ribs made with pockmarked potatoes and unlaid eggs, and bagels and lox made from the salmon bloodline (the gray, typically unused part of a smoked salmon), pickled beetroot roots, and "rejected horseradish." Last week, Barber also promised veggie burgers made from the pulp left over from juicing, and fried skate wing cartilage.

In other news: Hot beverages will come from Irving Farm and In Pursue of Tea, who will keep the theme of the pop-up in mind and serve "bottom of the barrel tea." There will also be a few "pop-ups within the pop-up" says a Blue Hill rep. Chefs like Marco Canora will "blitz the diners" with "Brodo bombs," for example, while Joost Bakker of Melbourne's Brothl will also make an unannounced appearance.

"If this is done right [it will] broadcast a message about how chefs, and restaurants in particular, can bring about a cultural shift in how we think about producing enough food to feed a growing population," said Barber.

Reservations for each night (March 13-31) will go live exactly a week out. But also keep in mind, WastED is walk-in only from 9 p.m. on.