From paddock to plate: Orange Restaurant champions whole-carcass approach to cut waste
A regional New South Wales restaurant has taken a nose-to-tail beef philosophy that's as much about sustainability as it is about creativity in the kitchen.
Dom Aboud, executive chef at Sienna Hospitality's Union Bank restaurant in Orange, made the switch to purchasing whole steers after a moment of clarity during a routine supply order.
"If I just said I wanted 12 Scotch fillets, they're going to be left with something like 200 kilos of meat to move," Aboud told the ABC. "From a sustainability and chef's sense, I don't want to see great produce go in the bin and as a business owner, we don't want to see anything go in the bin."
The decision led him to source an entire carcass from Tilda Chianina, a property at Cudal west of Orange, and one of only a handful of Australian farms raising the ancient Italian Chianina breed — a variety renowned for its tenderness and leanness, and traditionally associated with the celebrated Bistecca alla Fiorentina.
While whole-carcass purchasing has long been embraced by metropolitan fine dining, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) considers it an uncommon practice more broadly. Just over 8 per cent of a beef carcass yields the prime steaks — Scotch fillets, sirloins — that dominate menus and supermarket shelves. The remainder often ends up in secondary markets or pet food.
MLA's product and business development manager and corporate chef Sam Burke says the calculus for operators who make the switch is compelling.
"You've got an opportunity to use that whole carcass, you're not going to buy it to waste it," Burke said. "That means more opportunities to get more beef on the menu."
He noted that whole-carcass purchasing delivers 59 per cent more usable meat per animal, with a lower per-kilogram cost to match. "It provides an efficiency dividend on cost… it encourages the chef to be more creative, which is very exciting with Australian beef on the menu, and it lends itself to sustainable eating."
For Aboud, the approach has become a culinary adventure. Dishes emerging from the whole-beast program include a Lebanese-inspired corned beef, veal schnitzel and a chuck roll — cuts typically destined for mince — alongside lesser-known discoveries that have delighted guests.
"Finding things like a Sierra steak in the shoulder muscle, which is a really long flank-looking steak that grills up beautifully and would usually get trimmed out and tossed to the side," he told the ABC. "We've put all these things on the menu; people have been literally eating it up. It's been really, really good so far."
Even the fat has been repurposed — rendered into tallow and incorporated into sauces. The restaurant now takes delivery of a full carcass every four to six weeks.
Aboud hopes the model inspires broader industry uptake — particularly in regional areas where producer relationships are close and the case for minimising waste is even more acute.
"Australia is such a great place in general for old steak and chips, but levelling it up and really putting that care into using a whole beast and thinking about proactive ways that we can all do it," he said — rather than ordering "boxes and boxes and boxes of sirloin and getting left with everything else that comes with having to slaughter a steer for 12 sirloins."
Jonathan Jackson, 2nd March 2026
