Old-school Boston diners will remember Craigie Street Bistrot as the place to get into earlier in the evening since there were only a few dozen of the famed bar burgers on the menu nightly.
Today, the intimate space not far from Harvard University is home to a restaurant that swings in the opposite direction. Forage is “not a vegetarian restaurant,” chef Eric Cooper says, but its menu focuses on the yield of small, local produce farmers, which Cooper reduces the restaurant’s carbon footprint and food waste.
Two recent studies show that food (meat in particular) is responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that transportation accounts for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions within the US food system.
Staying local to reduce food waste is just one aspect of what has made Forage one of the leaders in the sustainability space in the Boston area since 2016.
Many of the sustainability practices at the restaurant are also based on years of research Cooper conducted among various communities abroad. What’s more, this sustainability mindset extends to setting a healthy work-life balance for staffers and inspiring diners to shop for food locally.
All of that makes Forage a standout in the local dining scene. Read on to learn more about the restaurant’s sustainability practices.

Why staying local matters
Cooper and Forage owner Stan Hilbert are hyper-focused on minimizing waste. The restaurant, which seats 48 inside (60 including a seasonal patio), produces less than a 5-gallon bucket of compost every day. (A half-pound of food waste is created for every restaurant meal served across the US, according to food-waste expert Jonathan Bloom, also the author of American Wasteland.)
At Forage, scraps are repurposed to make unique flavorings for cocktails or as accoutrements for meals; a watermelon rind vodka-based drink and asparagus-imbued vinegar are two recent highlights.
Cooper attributes the lack of waste to the fact that more than 90% of the products used at Forage are sourced in New England. This includes mushrooms from Somerville forager Tyler Akabane and other items from purveyors Cooper and Hilbert connected with when working together at Ten Tables (a Jamaica Plain restaurant that also highlights local ingredients). The other hodge podge items include oils, citrus, sugar, and some herbs that don’t grow locally.
This super-fresh approach to dining means a customer at Forage might experience something entirely different everyday, Cooper says. By comparison, most restaurants change their menus once a quarter (or every six weeks if they are smaller and independently owned).
This reliance on local produce ensures the restaurant is naturally vegetable forward.
“My diet, like the restaurant’s, is focused on meat as a supplement versus the centerpiece of any given meal,” Cooper says. “By working with local farmers, we’re building a regional food network and a community in Cambridge that appreciates and loves fresh, creative food that’s accessible.”
Leaning on lessons from abroad
Cooper has worked in kitchens all over the world, including in South Africa, Tibetan refugee communities, Scandinavia, and at an Antarctic research station. “A lot of the choices I make as I travel are based on what kind of food I can experience,” he says. “When I went to Scandinavia a few years ago, that was research into the sustainable food models they’re building there.”
Cooper’s travels to East Africa taught him about creativity in less urban areas with some sourcing limitations. “Swahili and Zanzibari cuisine has a lightness and playfulness and always has raw vegetables incorporated into every meal,” Cooper says. “Yet there’s a heavy use of rice and spice and complex, redolent dishes.”
His travels translate into dishes at Forage such as butternut squash tsukemono (a Japanese style of preserving vegetables) with fermented garlic tamari glaze and Sichuan toum (a Lebanese garlic sauce that Forage infuses with Asian flavors). The nori and striped bass with spiced rice and Lebanese pickled turnips is another dish Cooper was inspired to create from his travels.
For spring, Copper added a brined and fried cabbage plank, which evoked many of the earthy, warm flavors from his time in Africa. He seasons the cabbage with dukkah (a Middle Eastern condiment) that features funky brassica and adds mint, roasted mushrooms, and a sweet potato-and-onion hash.

Sustainability that extends beyond the plate
“There are lots of different kinds of sustainability,” Forage owner Hilbert says. That means
kitchen staff work four days at most, and only three of those are night shifts (the restaurant is open for dinner daily). “For anyone, for me, Eric, our sous chef, anybody who works for us, we don’t want them to be fried,” Hilbert says. “We want them to stay and be happy, because that comes across in the service.”
That also means giving staffers different kinds of responsibilities that spur creativity. Restaurant chef Matthew Bullock spearheads a weekly wine dinner on Tuesdays and a monthly supper club that showcases Southern food using New England ingredients. All of that means diners have even more ways of experiencing a meal at Forage.
Cooper believes the hallmark of a job well done is about inspiring diners to carry sustainable eating practices home. Those who are particularly enamored by something on the ever-changing menu can request any recipe they want to make themselves.
“My ultimate goal is for people to walk out of this restaurant, walk into a farmers’ market, and try to do what we do here—there’s very little we do at Forage with specialized equipment,” Cooper says. “I love the idea of someone coming here, saying that they’ve seen kohlrabi but never knew what to do with it, and now want to go buy and try.”
Carley Thornell-Wade is a Boston-based food, travel, and technology writer who’s been to more than 70 countries and delighted in tasting the regional delicacies of each.