The duck roaster that Maialino inherited from its predecessor Wakiya is a stainless steel drum about a person high and 3 people wide. Its use in a Roman-inspired kitchen requires a stretch of imagination, a stretch that sous-chef Dan Dilworth just pulled off. Dilworth saw in the duck roaster the makings of a compost container. He saw in halved Fiji water bottles pots for his seedlings, in old mixing bowls a home for his herb garden, and in rubber kitchen mats insulation for his compost container.

Over the last months Dilworth, with the help of front-of-the-house manager Kevin Denton, has constructed an edible garden on the roof of the Gramercy Park Hotel out of rejected Wakiya hand-me-downs and the daily waste of Maialino.

Dilworth squeezes benefit from everything at hand including rainwater and a brick wall. He gathers raindrops in old grease tubs, piping the water through beds of eggplant and squash. He concocted a pulley system attached to the building’s brick wall that allows him to raise and lower tomato plants growing in recycled plastic containers.

Dilworth didn’t train as an engineer or a gardener. He’s a cook, doing what a good cook does best – taking what’s at hand and making something better. On this rooftop, Dilworth serves up an improbable oasis of comestibles that just happens to overlook the Manhattan skyline.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Molly's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.