On Wednesday the 6th of March our first enbiun supper took place. Supper is a gathering of inspiring people from our network, clients, friends, and colleagues.
Turning our studio into a restaurant.
Eating in an office building may not sound very cozy. However the prejudice, our studio really is designed to be a space where creation and hosting food events naturally flow into one another. When stepping into our office you find an open kitchen, that blends a restaurant-like kitchen with a domestic scale. Behind that lies a lounge which decorated with live plants and a herb garden. Our studio starts in the second half of the space, where collaboration and concentration dictate the design. On this evening our studio floor truly became the stage for an office supper.
This Suppers food
The whole menu we served together with inspiring chefs, designers and food entrepreneurs. Plus our food department did some cooking themselves, starting the evening of with a dish with leek and Blaarkopse kefir cheese made by Jacqueline van den Brug. A local cheesemaker who just moved from Amsterdam North to Heilo where she now runs her business with people from the GGZ at estate Willibrordus. The dish was served with sourdough bread with fresh buttermilk butter from Eline Ex, an entrepreneurial baker from Amsterdam North.
The main dish was presented by Sasker Scheerder from Manenwolf’s food lab and chef Gilbert Kolff founder of Fond Rotterdam a food concept agency and one the culinary masterminds behind Brasserie 2050. Sasker is a fermentation obsessed product developer from Rotterdam. A lot of Dutch chefs work with his big variety of ferments, lemonades and smoked goods. Sasker and Gilbert often collaborate with enbiun for inspiration workshops for our clients, and we asked them if they wanted to contribute to our supper. The dish they presented was a fantastic riff on a Dutch classic.
Gilbert made a stew of Sasker’s bean tempeh, soya and a vegetable gravy. The stew was served with potato mash and a ‘moesapple’. Moesapple is a peeled apple with a thick crispy skin from the outside and a sweet mash inside. Sasker complemented the dish with multiple compliments for example ‘red hot kraut’ ; a two year aged sour kraut of red cabbage, a ‘cranberry-elderberry-worcestershire style sauce’ which made us think of a fruity hoisin sauce but more spectacular in taste, honey fermented cranberries which gave the right edge with a nice splash to the dish and least but not least his umami bomb Kimchi salt; salt recovered from kimchi brine.
The supper table was impressed with the storytelling of the chefs and the incredible impact of umami and flavor of this home food dish. Extra surprising was that the stew used no meat or dairy products. The stew and moesapple where an instant hit and the participants concluded that this is a dish which could be served in every Dutch canteen.
Product designer, Maarten Baptist contributed his outline cutlery and glassware for the evening. At the studio we have been using his coffee cups for a long time. The wine was served from Maarten’s beautiful carafes, which also worked out in a practical sense, according to the host and sommelier of the evening Lieke Maas. The tripod glass used for dessert inspired chef of Pakhuis de Zwijger, Sander Uitdehaag to make a wastage free trifle with boston cake; made from potato mash, cardemon and nutmeg, prune compote from fruit from Instock, English creme and a sweet dukkha. A friend from Sander and old classmate from the academy David de Jong introduced his book ‘Slachtpaspoort.’ A book about an adventure of three friends questioning their eating habits. They decided to step into the confrontation to only eat the animals that they have slaughtered themselves.
Our first supper then came to an end with coffee and tea. Our tea supplier Dio from Citea poured us tea and told us how he became an entrepreneur after his time as a veteran in Afghanistan & Tsjaad. A very moving story to end our first supper together.
