THE renegade restaurateurs who started a “food surplus cafe” in Oxford are back – and are asking city restaurants and shops to fill their cooking pots.

The group will hold its second cafe at East Oxford Community Centre on Saturday from noon to 4pm.

The idea is to use perfectly good food that supermarkets or eateries would otherwise throw out, such as vegetables or salads that do not look attractive to shoppers but are still perfectly healthy.

Diners at the pop-up cafe will be able to pay whatever they think their meal is worth in cash, or even pay with services such as doing the washing up or providing entertainment for other diners.

Peter Lefort, one of those involved in the scheme, said: “We’re only asking people for food that would otherwise have gone to waste.

“We can only accept things that have a use-by date of July 11 at the latest, but best-before and sell-by are pretty much decorative.”

Oxford Food Bank has already offered to give the cafe any surplus it has on the day and the cooks will also use leftovers from Tandem music festival in Farmoor last weekend.

Beth McAllister, 30, helped organise the first pop-up cafe at the community centre on April 25.

She said: “The first event had the wonderful atmosphere of a community meal.

“People sat down and ate a meal together with those they wouldn’t usually meet, and all with perfectly good food that would have gone to waste.

“Everyone enjoyed it. Also, the food was delicious.”

She said she got involved because she wanted to find a community space to talk about food waste in the city and added: “The surplus cafe does that – but with an important issue at its core – trying to reduce and educate about food waste.

“There are people going hungry in Oxford and I wanted to be a part of a movement, happening across the country, to do something about this.”

The food surplus cafe group says the average restaurant wastes about 21 tonnes per year in unused food and leftovers.

Isi Elshal, manager of Portabello Restaurant & Bar Grill in Summertown, said he would welcome the idea of co-operating in such a scheme.

He said: “I have not heard of it before but I think if we have something to give we will do it rather than throw it away.”