In a restaurant, day-old bread is often the prime suspect when it comes to waste. Candida Visaggi, instead, chose to turn it into a raw material for transformation: at Anma, the venue she opened after a background in engineering and various professional experiences, leftover bread can find its way into a cocktail preparation through kvass. It is a detail that clearly reflects the project's approach, built on working with fermentations, living beverages, and ingredients treated with care even after their initial use.
The chef's journey does not follow the most conventional path in the restaurant industry. Before culinary studies and kitchen work came engineering; then followed experiences including Copenaghen and Gabicce Monte, two milestones that helped shape a culinary vocabulary where technique, observation, and process organization coexist. Anma was born from this layering, without presenting sustainability as a separate chapter of the menu: here, surplus management and fermentation contribute directly to what is offered to guests.
Repurposing becomes a menu choice
The case of kvass clarifies the rationale behind the operation. Traditionally associated with Eastern Europe, this fermented beverage can also be made using bread. Within Anma, a product that would otherwise risk going unused is put back into circulation, moving from the bread basket to the glass. It is not an invisible reuse or a solution devised merely for the back of house: it reaches the customer in the form of a cocktail and becomes part of the dining experience.
The difference is significant because in the restaurant sector, waste reduction is often framed around commendable principles that prove difficult to translate into a recognizable offering. A repurposed ingredient must maintain quality, flavor consistency, and processing safety; moreover, it must find a placement that guests perceive as desirable, not as a compromise. The choice to use kvass demonstrates the opposite approach: the limitation of available ingredients is treated as a creative starting point.
This does not mean that every scrap can or should be fermented. Recovery requires selection, timing, control, and a precise understanding of the preparations. Bread, in particular, quickly changes texture and aromatic profile, and fermentation processes cannot be improvised. For an establishment, turning reuse into a consistent practice therefore means planning purchasing, production, and service in a more coordinated way. In this case, sustainability is not an afterthought: it depends on daily decisions in both the kitchen and the bar.
Fermentation beyond the role of a side dish
Alongside kvass, Anma works with kombucha and other fermented preparations. These are items that have gained traction in the restaurant industry in recent years, both in the kitchen and in non-alcoholic or low-ABV pairings. Their appeal lies not only in novelty: acidity, aromatic complexity, and time-dependent variations can offer different tools for constructing a dish or a drink.
For a restaurant, however, introducing these elements means accepting less standardized management compared to many industrial bases. Fermentation is a living process, influenced by ingredients, temperature, and duration. It therefore demands consistent monitoring and adaptability—two aspects that naturally align with a background accustomed to analyzing processes and variables. Engineering alone does not define a cuisine, but in Visaggi’s journey, it provides a useful lens for understanding the attention given to each step, to transformations, and to the potential reuse of ingredients.
The presence of kombucha, kvass, and fermented products should not be seen as an aesthetic shortcut to update the menu. In Anma’s project, these products complement a cuisine focused on making the most of available resources. The line between kitchen and beverage thus becomes more porous: the same raw material can serve different purposes, and a beverage can help reduce a portion of the surplus generated by daily production.
From Nordic cuisine to a personal project
The experience in Copenaghen carries particular weight in this story. The Danish capital is one of the places that helped bring techniques such as fermentation, preservation, and the whole-ingredient approach to the forefront of the contemporary gastronomic debate. It would be reductive to attribute the origin of these practices—which have far older and more widespread roots—to a single city or school. Yet it remains a context in which such techniques were brought back to the core of fine dining and made visible to the broader public.
The other step highlighted in Visaggi's journey is Gabicce Monte. Together, these experiences reflect a background shaped across different environments and references prior to the opening of Anma. The new restaurant is not described as the replica of an external model: rather, as the place where skills, kitchen brigade experience, and personal sensibility come together around a well-defined proposition.
In this framework, even an engineering degree avoids becoming a mere biographical detail. In contemporary restaurant management, where margins, purchasing, inventory, and shifts are just as decisive as the culinary concept, thinking in systems has tangible consequences. Reducing unused material can cut costs and waste, but it does not automatically produce an economically viable model. What is needed are replicable recipes, a trained team, and customer demand capable of recognizing the value in less conventional preparations.
A practical lesson for the industry
The opening of Anma comes at a time when food recovery is increasingly moving beyond moral rhetoric. Restaurants are facing rising raw material costs, demand fluctuations, and growing guest awareness regarding food provenance and processing. In this scenario, working with surplus food can become an operational lever, provided that waste reduction is not confused with simply cutting portion sizes or quality.
The model presented by Visaggi is compelling precisely because it starts from a focused, legible action: leftover bread is not merely avoided or discarded, but finds a new role on the cocktail menu. It is an approach that is only partially replicable, as every venue has different volumes, equipment, and expertise. Yet it points in a tangible direction: identifying the most recurring waste or surpluses, studying their potential applications, and transforming them into products with their own identity, rather than treating them solely as an unavoidable cost.
For Anma, the challenge will be sustaining this balance over time. Fermented preparations require consistency, and bread recovery relies on the ability to schedule production without deliberately creating a surplus. If the approach remains consistent, the venue can demonstrate that resource-conscious dining does not have to sacrifice precision or reduce the issue of waste to a mere marketing message. It can seamlessly integrate it into the menu and into the glass.
