Announcing the Sustainability Winner at the 2026 National Restaurant Awards

Each year, The Sustainable Restaurant Association judges the Estrella Damm Sustainability Award, recognising a restaurant that is delivering outstanding social and environmental impact through the way it operates. 

The standard of entries this year was exceptionally high, with an inspiring range of submissions showcasing the many ways hospitality businesses are creating positive change. Using the same Framework that underpins our Food Made Good Standard, we assessed each restaurant across three core pillars: Sourcing, Society and Environment, paying particular attention to ambitious and innovative action taken over the past year. 

This year's shortlist featured five outstanding restaurants: 

While every shortlisted restaurant showcasing an exemplary approach to sustainability, BiBi stood out as a model for how sustainable fine dining can thrive in a major city, showing that luxury hospitality, a menu defined by global ingredients and traditions and social and environmental responsibility can coexist and flourish. Our Director of Growth, Will Browning, was delighted to present this well-deserved award at last night's ceremony.

Read on to discover why BiBi won and to learn more about this incredible shortlist.

SOURCING 

Founder Chet Sharma grew up in an agricultural family with farms across Punjab and Haryana, informing a cooking style centred on respect for ingredients and conscious sourcing. British produce forms the foundation of the menu, which revolves around ingredients available at peak quality, alongside wild and foraged produce, complemented by carefully sourced dry goods from long-standing suppliers and growers in India with clear social and environmental standards. It is a farm-to-table approach adapted for a kitchen working with globally connected ingredients and traditions. 

SOCIETY 

BiBi also stands out for putting its teams at the heart of its operation. At a time when fine dining is reassessing its approach to workplace culture, Chet Sharma is an example of a chef who came through demanding, high-pressure kitchens and chose to build something different. BiBi operates a four-day work week supported by fair pay, wellbeing support and learning and development opportunities. Employee contracts were recently reduced from 48 to 45 hours; the management team is trained as mental health first aiders; and maternity and paternity packages have been expanded beyond industry norms. 

The team is also involved in wider industry advocacy, including work with the Prept Foundation to educate young people about nutrition and healthy eating, alongside ambassador roles with the Global Cooksafe Coalition supporting the transition to induction cooking. Sustainability is not treated as a standalone initiative but as something that guides every business decision. 

ENVIRONMENT 

Waste reduction is approached with creativity and discipline. The team favours whole ingredient use, with trimmings repurposed into new ingredients for added depth and flavour (such as turning paneer offcuts into miso). A new waste management partnership has helped to divert a far greater proportion of waste away from landfill. Energy efficiency has been improved through remote-access extraction systems that optimise fan usage, while menus are printed on compostable paper made from spent beer grain. 

BiBi provides exactly the kind of example the industry needs in 2026, demonstrating that better action can be embedded into ambitious, high-end hospitality and offering a model for others to follow. 

@bibi_ldn

CELEBRATING THE SHORTLIST 

Congratulations to all of this year's shortlisted restaurants. The standard of entries was exceptionally high, with an inspiring range of submissions showcasing the many different ways hospitality businesses are creating positive impact. The judging process was closely contested, and the panel was hugely impressed by the ambition, creativity and dedication shared across all entries.  

TIMBERYARD, EDINBURGH 

Located in the heart of Edinburgh, Timberyard is a family-run restaurant that opened in 2012. The restaurant’s operational philosophy is centred on long-term longevity, dependent on the interconnected relationship between people, place and community — the team, suppliers, the land and the wider community it operates within. It reflects an intention to tread as lightly as possible on the planet that sustains it. 

They partner with a hand-picked selection of farms and organisations with strong values; Cyrenians and GreenHeart Growers are both charity-based organisations using food and farming to create social impact. Lauriston Agroecology Farm is a community-led project that grows specific lines of produce exclusively for the restaurant. They cook nose-to-tail and root-to-shoot, using foraged seasonal ingredients collected by an in-house team and professional foragers (including spruce tips, pinecones, beach rose and elderflower) and invasive non-native species. In 2025, they moved almost entirely to wild meat (venison, wild boar, rabbit, hare, feral goat and game birds), keeping only one pig per month for charcuterie and reducing animal protein CO₂ emissions by around 75%. 

Their drinks list is fully organic, with all soft drinks, vermouths, liqueurs and cocktails made in-house, supported by purchasing spirits in bulk to reduce glass waste and transport emissions. They also melt down and re-pour candle ends to reduce waste. 

@timberyard10

CATCH AT THE OLD FISH MARKET, WEYMOUTH  

On the southern British shoreline, Catch at the Old Fish Market is celebrating the local fishing community by serving up an incredible variety of seafood — especially lesser-known species — sourced from Weymouth’s small day boats using low-impact methods.  

Catch’s whole-fish philosophy, dry-ageing techniques and waste reduction systems reflect their deep respect for the catch and the people behind it. The restaurant regularly hosts its fishermen so they can see how their seafood is used on the menu, and the team runs events and school sessions to provide education around sustainable sourcing. 

Aside from seafood, almost the entire menu is UK-sourced (aside from coffee and chocolate), with even their tea grown in Cornwall. They’ve removed imported ingredients like citrus, using British-grown herbs, vinegars and other creative substitutes instead. Their partnership with The Veg Lady, an organic-certified grower using regenerative methods, has led to the creation of a herb plot on restaurant-owned land (soon to expand into vegetable growing!) alongside their own beehives producing Meadows Honey. Catch has also eliminated single-use plastics, completed a full CO₂ assessment — rare for a business of this size — and introduced sustainability incentives for staff. With solar panels, an air-source heat pump and innovative heat recovery from refrigeration, their energy system is now almost entirely self-sustaining. 

 @catchattheoldfishmarket

Since 2018, The Long Table has offered a live example of a different kind of hospitality. It asks a simple question: what if everyone in our community had access to good food and someone to share it with? With sites in Stroud and Cirencester, it operates a pay-as-you-can model grounded in the belief that good food should be responsibly produced, carefully used, and generously shared. 

Sourcing is designed to strengthen the local food economy, with funds flowing to local and ethical farms, growers, bakers and makers through long-term relationships. Menus are shaped by what is available: whole animals, seasonal abundance, gluts, less popular cuts, and ingredients that might otherwise be overlooked. Food rescue also plays a role, with over 70kg of food per week sourced via FareShare South West. 

Environmentally, impact is managed through daily practice: careful ordering, flexible menus, preservation where possible, and reduced avoidable waste. All cooked and raw food waste is processed through a digester, producing compost used to grow edible herbs and flowers on site. 

The pay-as-you-can model is central to this restaurant’s social ethos. Every guest receives the same meal, welcome, and dignity, regardless of what they pay. In the last financial year, over 65,000 people ate at The Long Table. Around one in 10 paid nothing, and around 40% paid below the meal cost, currently £10.30. 

@thelongtablestroud @thelongtablecirencester

Fowlescombe Farm is set on a 450-acre working farm on the edge of Dartmoor, with The Refectory at its centre, led by Executive Chef Elly Wentworth. 

Sourcing begins on the farm itself and is guided through daily coordination, ensuring that menus follow what is ready, emerging or needs using. The farm operates organically and regeneratively, focused on improving soil health and strengthening ecosystems for the long term. Heritage and rare-breed livestock — including English Shorthorn cattle and Manx Loaghtan sheep — are slow-reared and rotationally grazed on pasture. Kitchen gardens function as layered, productive ecosystems supplying vegetables, herbs and fruit throughout the seasons. Perennial planting has increased, improving year-round access to homegrown produce.

What cannot be produced on site is sourced from a tightly defined network of hyper-local suppliers who share the same values, including hand-dived scallops from nearby waters and dairy from a neighbouring “carbon-negative” farm. Supplier relationships and stories are communicated directly to guests on menus and through natural conversations with the team about where food comes from, who produced it and why this matters. 

A low-waste approach underpins operations: every part of every ingredient is used where possible through whole-ingredient cooking, preservation and fermentation. The lunch offering has been fully redesigned around this principle, with a daily blackboard designed around what is available and deliberately structured to reduce kitchen food waste. What waste remains, including egg boxes and the seaweed their scallops arrive in, is composted and returned to the gardens, closing the loop and returning nutrients to the soil. 

@fowlescombe

We would like to thank every restaurant that entered this year's award and encourage businesses across the sector to get involved again in 2027. The standard continues to rise year after year, and we look forward to seeing even more inspiring examples of sustainability in action in next year's entries. 

Photographs by Anton Rodriguez, previously shared with us courtesy of BiBi.

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