Nobelhart & Schmutzig cooks up a taste of home

BERLIN. What exactly is home? This is the question that the team at Berlin restaurant Nobelhart & Schmutzig, awarded a Michelin star and ranked 59th in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, has been asking itself over the past few weeks. The answer: a new culinary series called “Wir kochen Heimat” (We cook home), which has been running every Tuesday to Thursday since the beginning of January, alongside the regular menu.

Throughout the year, the team led by culinary director Micha Schäfer will be dedicating itself to changing dishes, where a single bite is enough to satisfy the need for lost comfort, simplicity and warmth. Just like back then at grandma's stove. The first episode of the series, Heimat #1: Kohlroulade vom Kalb (Veal Cabbage Rolls), draws on a childhood memory of Micha Schäfer, which he shares with many other people, as an Instagram survey of the restaurant showed. Schäfer serves a cabbage roll stuffed with veal from the Erdhof Seewalde farm, seasoned with salt, pepper, onions and caraway seeds, rolled up in blanched pointed cabbage. The dish is accompanied by a rich veal jus and mashed potatoes. Rye sourdough bread from Brotwerk (Florian Domberger) and homemade, matured raw milk butter made from cream from Erdhof Seewalde are integral parts of the menu, which is served at a price of £55 per person. The cabbage roulade is offered Tuesday to Thursday in two sittings, at 6 p.m. (limited to 8:15 p.m.) and 9 p.m. Guests can, of course, order additional courses from the regular menu. In addition to a large selection of wines, Billy Wagner also offers regional specialities and non-alcoholic options, such as the famous apple-spruce juice or the new Fields Blend "Lemon Thyme" from the Jürgen Leiner winery.

With "Wir kochen Heimat" (We cook home), the Nobelhart & Schmutzig team wants to contribute to the cultural debate on the concept of home, which is often (negatively) politically charged in public discourse. Their approach therefore deliberately shifts the perspective to the culinary and uses taste as a vehicle for memory. The concept is clearly rooted in everyday life in Berlin, which is characterised by cultural diversity and where different identities coexist without competing with each other. Accordingly, it is important to the team to venture beyond traditional, overly simplified ideas of German cuisine and to incorporate dishes from other culinary contexts in the future.

The ideas and recipes come from people who live and work in Berlin, regardless of where their deeper roots lie. The focus is always on the excellent food from the Berlin-Brandenburg region – nevertheless, the team reserves the right to purchase one or two additional ingredients; here, home is not a purity law. Schäfer and Wagner emphasise that the series does not provide a "solution" to the complex discussions surrounding the topic of home, but rather a pragmatic approach to the question of what home can be if one wants to understand it not as a basis for alienation but as an invitation to encounter.

Incidentally, the next theme has already been decided: from March onwards, Heimat #2 will focus on chicken fricassee (Lars Odefey) – with Aljoscha Füting, operations manager at Nobelhart & Schmutzig, as its patron. If you want to know what happens next, you can always find the latest information at www.nobelhartundschmutzig.com.