At Shuggie’s Trash Pie and Natural Wine in San Francisco’s Mission District, David Murphy and Kayla Abe are committed to making “seasonal pizzas and sexy share plates, all highlighting upcycled ingredients and sustainable proteins.” The partners in life and business are committed to tracking down excess food for a healthier future on this planet while also making mouth-watering dishes. 

On their menu, this translates to a dough made with whey (a byproduct of their cheesemaking) and milled oat flour (the byproduct of oat milk production) and dish ingredients and pizza toppings like herb stems, swordfish belly and tempura crispies. These approaches to recycling ingredients most of us throw away are genuinely inspiring and may make you rethink how you cook. 

A pizza we were particularly taken with that they’ve shared here is the Pickle Lady Pizza. It features “dilly double cream,” Taleggio (a semi-soft Italian cheese), slivered red onions, pickles, chopped herb stems and salmon belly, which while sometimes seen as an offcut, is one of the fattiest and most flavorful parts of the fish. For the belly, they also use a conserva, a technique that involves preserving food in a liquid such as oil or salt water and another great way to combat food waste.

Because Shuggie’s rescues ingredients that would otherwise go to waste — ‘ugly’ or surplus products, lower-on-the-food-chain seafood, and offcuts from the meat industry — it’s worth trying to shop and cook with this in mind. (Local farmer’s markets are a great resource!) In that spirit, if you don’t have specific herbs or offcuts but have something else similar on hand, we’d suggest straying from the recipe to stay more true to its mission. No matter how you slice it, this pizza is guaranteed to make you feel good about eating good.