Adelaide Convention Centre's worm farm: Keith watches the centre's new residents silently munch away in the Adelaide City region of South Australia
The Adelaide Convention Centre has just celebrated its 22nd birthday and the huge curved expanse of glass standing guard over the Torrens has become a landmark feature of Adelaide's cityscape. Hosting thousands of conferences, exhibitions, trade shows, seminars, meetings and banquets every year, for many visitors the Convention Centre is an important entree to all things South Australian. For fly in and fly outs it could be their entire South Australian experience - that includes the food.
Meet flamboyant Executive Chef, Tze Khaw. Malaysian born, Tze has worked in the some of the world's great kitchens and now presides over the mammoth behind the scenes operation catering for the culinary wants of convention clients and Regattas - the classy public restaurant on the promenade.
As you might expect, a kitchen this size produces a lot of waste - and while the kitchen staff are creative - they can't re-serve eggshells, banana skins or teabags. So that's where Tze's 3-bin system comes in - general food scraps go into the yellow bio-bin for composting, rubbish in another and this one - a smorgasbord for the Convention Centre's newest workforce - the worms.
Tze Khaw, Executive Chef: "All of our off-cuts in the kitchen go into our bio-bin and our worm farm. Our worm farm takes about 400-kilos of vegetable trimmings and food off-cuts alone a week."
Since staff enthusiastically embraced the zero waste philosophy they've been able to reduce their contribution to landfill by an astonishing 70 percent. Out the back, the custom built worm farm sits unobtrusively in a corner of the yard - but inside - it's a frantic metropolis as the residents silently munch away.
The lovely rich humus that comes out the other end is used on the gardens and pot plants around the convention centre site. They've already got a trial herb garden on the go - with plans to grow more as the worms continue their work.
Tze Khaw, Executive Chef: "We started with about 10,000 worms and we estimate there's probably 800,000 now. They are all munching away in fact the engineering department has told me we need more food scraps. They just don't have enough so 400 kilos is nothing for them to consume now."
Back in the kitchen, the work is relentless. A while back, when they had a full house they turned out as many as 4,500 meals in one day. Tze says in the three weeks leading up to Christmas they prepare as many as 27,000 meals. Astonishing! But it's not all production line stuff - Regattas is the classy public face of Tze's cooking empire.
Under Tze's watch, Regatta's is all about modern Australian cuisine - local ingredients of course, with a strong Asian influence so when you order a dish at Regatta's you know you'll have fresh local produce, beautifully cooked and presented. Now you also know that out the back the worms are also working too. Another first for Adelaide's green Convention Centre.
Regattas Bistro is open daily from 8am 9for breakfast until late. The Convention Centre is available for all manner of events from small intimate meetings to mega conferences. Give them a call to discuss the options. If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au
Regattas Bistro
Bookings Ph 8210 6785Adelaide Convention Centre
North Terrace
Ph 8212 4099Published 28th June 2009
