For 83 years, the Pacific Dining Car, with its mahogany walls, brass fixtures and ample portions of omelets Florentine and steak and eggs, has been a symbol of old-fashioned epicurean indulgence.
This year, the venerable downtown eatery also became an environmental trendsetter, one of the first restaurants to recycle food as part of a city-sponsored experiment. The project is modeled after one in San Francisco that has attracted worldwide interest.
Instead of throwing leftovers in the garbage, cooks and dishwashers collect customers' unfinished steaks and salads, along with the potato peels, fish bones, melon rinds and other scraps generated in the kitchen, in blue recycling bins.
The food waste, which adds up to more than 3 tons a week, is shipped to Bakersfield, where it is combined with grass clippings to make an exceptionally nutrient-rich compost used by farmers who grow grapes, watermelons, cherries and carrots.
"We take and take from the Central Valley, but we never give anything back," said Berty Siegels, Pacific Dining Car's executive chef. "Well, now we do."
More than 30 Los Angeles restaurants have joined the program, including such landmarks as Musso & Frank Grill and El Coyote Cafe.
They are recycling food, saving money on their trash bills and reducing waste sent to landfills while providing California farmers with a new source of nourishment for their crops.
Los Angeles already encourages restaurants to send uneaten meals to food banks, but most table scraps and kitchen scraps are not edible.
Food waste makes up a sizable portion of the garbage that winds up in landfills around the country.
In California, more than 5 million tons of food scraps are discarded every year -- about 16% of all the garbage that residents, businesses and government institutions send to the dumps, according to the state's Integrated Waste Management Board.
San Francisco in 1996 became the first large city to start a food recycling program. Officials there were searching for a way to comply with a 1989 state law requiring cities to divert half of their garbage from landfills.
Unlike Los Angeles, which could turn its ample green waste into compost, San Francisco didn't have enough grass to meet the requirement.
More than 2,200 businesses and 75,000 households participate in San Francisco's food recycling program, yielding 300 tons a day of what waste management officials have dubbed "four course compost." The high-grade natural fertilizer, good enough for organic farms, is helping grow some of the finest wine grapes in the Napa Valley.
