Verde

Built in numbers. Small bites for Volkswagen Automobile Berlin GmbH AchtBerlin.

Salmon cones, crème fraîche, caviar
Blue cheese and caramelised onion tarts with pear mustard
Focaccia, summer squash in escabeche, manchego
Buttermilk fried chicken buns, chipotle cole slaw
Vegan maritozzi

The first time I saw nicole economides work was in Athens, at the gallery of my dear friend , Callirrhoë, Athens . Her paintings stayed with me, images drawn from a family archive, carried across places and generations, then looked at again through colour, scale and repetition. Through this process, the original image remains, but becomes something new: her own relationship with that memory.
So when Catharina Bonorden - Margherita Rossi and Droste Galladé invited me to create a dinner around her work, I kept returning to one thought: memory is never fixed. And recipes behave in much the same way.
The menu began with recipes that are part of my own memory, such as my grandmother’s risotto. Something I knew through her and through watching her cook long before I ever thought of it as a recipe.
I have carried it with me through different countries, kitchens and moments of my life. Each time I cook it, something shifts. The ingredients around me change, my technique changes, my palate changes, so are people eating it. What arrives on the plate today is no longer exactly her risotto, but I still recognise her in it. And somewhere along the way, I recognise myself too.
For another dish, we looked directly at Nicole’s own archive: her stuffed peppers.
In Illusion of home, as a memory, Nicole spends two hours preparing a recipe passed through her grandfather’s family. A dish traditionally carried through generations of women, and one she reclaims through the simple act of cooking it herself, in her studio, on her own terms.
Bringing the peppers onto our table felt like continuing that gesture.
Two recipes, two memories, both inherited and transformed. Neither reproduced exactly as it was.
Perhaps recipes are also a kind of family archive. We inherit them, carry them with us, change them and allow the places and people we encounter to become part of them.
This dinner was not about recreating the past.
It was about remembering it from where we are now.

Two places. One table.
Poland met Mexico for Marika and Toro’s wedding lunch at their stunning space, atemporal_projects.
Birria inside pierogi.
Oscypek alongside mole.
Scallop, cucumber and aguachile.
Beef cheek.
Poblano pozole.
Not fusion for the sake of fusion, but a menu built around two people, two cultures, and everything that happens when they meet somewhere in between.
The gran finale with the most beautiful wedding cake by Cake Studio Berlin / Torten Berlin.
We left once again, wishing we’d photographed more of the food.
But perhaps some tables are better remembered than documented.

Archive looks with a side of bubbles (as it should be!).

Finger food and ch*****ne for

Erborinato tartine with fruit mustard
Porcini croquettes, cured lemon cream
Chicken mousse with anchovy and capers on tart with pickled squash
Frittata, peas and truffle
Rice onigiri with avocado
Celery root and oregano tart with saffron

Raspberry gelée
Macarons
pistacchio maritozzi

Ch*****ne Tange-Gérard from the one and only

blue and bold

Another family meal on the block throne 🔪
Squash risotto edition - recipe below!

What You’ll Need (serves 4)
2 L vegetable + miso stock (keep it warm)
60 g unsalted butter, room temp
30 g olive oil
300 g Carnaroli rice
100 g squash purée (roasted butternut or kabocha - whatever fall energy you’ve got)
50 g grated Parmigiano Reggiano
Salt, to taste

Extras if you wanna be extra:
Burrata (always a good idea
Pickled squash + kohlrabi for crunch
Roasted hazelnuts
Crispy sage leaves
A drizzle of chive oil

How to Make It
1. Warm the stock
Keep your broth just simmering. It should always be hot and ready.
2. Toast the rice
Add your rice and stir for a minute or two — it should look shiny and smell a little nutty.
That’s the good stuff.
3. Slow pour, slow stir
Ladle in a bit of hot stock (like 200 ml). Stir.
Chill. Repeat.
Add more stock as it absorbs — about 100 ml at a time. Stir constantly like you mean it (wide circles, then small).
If it starts to stick, chill the heat a bit.
4. Bring in the squash
Around the 15-minute mark, when the rice is nearly al dente, add your squash purée. Stir it in and keep adding stock until it’s creamy, dreamy, and perfectly textured.
Taste test: it should be soft but still have a little bite.
5. Finish strong
Kill the heat, then stir in the rest of the butter and Parmesan. Season with salt, and watch it go glossy - literal serotonin.
6. Plate it.
Spoon it out, top with burrata, pickled squash, hazelnuts, and crispy sage.
Drizzle that chive oil

Another family meal on the block throne 🧑‍🍳

Squash risotto edition - recipe below!

What You’ll Need (serves 4)
2 L vegetable + miso stock (keep it warm)
60 g unsalted butter, room temp
30 g olive oil
300 g Carnaroli rice
100 g squash purée (roasted butternut or kabocha — whatever fall energy you’ve got)
50 g grated Parmigiano Reggiano
Salt, to taste

Extras if you wanna be extra:
Burrata (always a good idea
Pickled squash + kohlrabi for crunch
Roasted hazelnuts
Crispy sage leaves
A drizzle of chive oil

How to Make It
1. Warm the stock
Keep your broth just simmering. It should always be hot and ready.
2. Toast the rice
Add your rice and stir for a minute or two — it should look shiny and smell a little nutty.
That’s the good stuff.
3. Slow pour, slow stir
Ladle in a bit of hot stock (like 200 ml). Stir.
Chill. Repeat.
Add more stock as it absorbs — about 100 ml at a time. Stir constantly like you mean it (wide circles, then small).
If it starts to stick, chill the heat a bit.
4. Bring in the squash
Around the 15-minute mark, when the rice is nearly al dente, add your squash purée. Stir it in and keep adding stock until it’s creamy, dreamy, and perfectly textured.
Taste test: it should be soft but still have a little bite.
5. Finish strong
Kill the heat, then stir in the rest of the butter and Parmesan. Season with salt, and watch it go glossy - literal serotonin.
6. Plate it.
Spoon it out, top with burrata, pickled squash, hazelnuts, and crispy sage.
Drizzle that chive oil

Beginning of October.

Celebrating this years’s grape harvest, .lab 10th anniversary and the road to 2026

Beginning of October 🍂

Celebrating this year’s grape harvest, .lab 10th anniversary, the road to 2026

Organic farms around here celebrate fall as the moment when the year’s work finally pays off, with pumpkins and squash in every color, young roots pulled fresh from the dirt in any shape you can possibly imagine, and tender cabbages and leeks stacked high.
Maybe it’s an old farming tradition to take a break in mid-October from school. Once, it was for harvest time. Now, most people use it to travel, to chase a last bit of sun before winter really settles in.

In the kitchen, fall just feels right. It’s that sweet spot where summer’s green freshness meets winter’s cozy, deeper side. Wild mushrooms show up, berries linger, game comes back into season. After months of chasing crisp greens and delicate shoots, it feels natural to slow down — to soften flavors, let things simmer a little longer.

Roots stay a bit crunchy, roasted carrots and cauliflower hit the menu again. Sauces get thicker, richer — stock-based, reduced, a little toasty, a little nutty, but still light. And then there’s the fruit — pears and apples at their peak, slow-grown in the northern sun. Their flavor just hits different — simple, honest, full of character.
Fall isn’t really an ending. It’s more like the quiet payoff, when the year finally tastes the way it was meant to.