Is it OK to take leftover restaurant food in a doggy bag?

Aldo Zilli, the celebrity chef argues all diners should be given the option of taking leftover food home, however expensive the restaurant is.

Taking leftover restaurant food in a ‘doggy bag’ to reheat at home is a “no-brainer”,  celebrity chef Aldo Zilli believes.

The Italian chef, who owns the string of Zilli restaurants, says his staff are always happy to provide containers so diners can take home any food they can’t eat, and he thinks all restaurants should do it.

“Taking food home when you’ve paid for it is a no-brainer,” he told Times Radio Breakfast.

In an interview with presenters Kait Borsay and Rick Kelsey, Zilli pointed out that in the UK we waste more food than we eat.

The charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) says hospitality firms bin the equivalent of 1.3 billion meals every year, and around a third of this food

Talking about his high-end Casa Zilli restaurant in Surrey, the 66-year-old said: “At the end of the night there’s lots of leftovers, because people can’t eat it all. Lobster ravioli, those kind of foods, people say to me, ‘Would you mind if we take it home?’ Course! We provide that service in a big way.”

In Spain, a law was approved this year stating all restaurant, café and bar customers would have the right to take their food with them, and leftovers would have to be put in recyclable packaging if the customer requests, at no additional cost to them.

It’s certainly something the British public agree with – a poll by the Daily Mail last year found 81% of people want all restaurants to offer doggy bags as standard practice – although almost half have never asked to take home uneaten food from a restaurant themselves.

Zilli, the youngest of nine children, explained that taking leftover food home is something he grew up doing.

“Weddings in Italy are like six or seven courses, so we always took the food home for the next day.”

In fact, at his Lucarelli Restaurant, in London’s Harvey Nichols, the pizzas are so big “there’s no way” a person can finish an entire one. “We just give people containers which they take home and they eat it the next day, they eat it in the evening, and that’s basically what should happen in restaurants, in any restaurant.”

He doesn’t think all chefs would be happy to do the same though.

“There are Michelin-starred chefs who can’t be bothered, there’s high-end restaurants that charge £200-£300 a head and they’re not going to give you the souffle to take home.

“There will be chefs and restaurants that are going to think this is the biggest nightmare that can ever happen,” he said. “But as a young Italian who came to this country with nothing, I’ve always helped.

“So I never wasted anything, I always fed everyone where I could.”

But are British people often too reserved to ask to take their leftovers home?

What are your views? Have you ever asked for your leftover food to be packaged for you to take home? Would you be comfortable asking?