Behind the Spree Kitchen: How We Build a Menu

Our chefs gather around the pass, ingredients spread across the counter, and we argue — about balance, about memory, about what a plate should feel like at midnight on a summer terrace. We start with the season. Not the calendar season printed on a specials board, but the actual season — the one that depends on rain, on the particular warmth of the sun that week, on what the market in Friedrichshain had at six in the morning.

The Mediterranean on a Plate

The Mediterranean is not one place. It is a coastline of contradictions: the austerity of a Sicilian salt-cured anchovy and the extravagance of a Lebanese mezze table coexisting on the same sea. That contradiction is our starting point.

When a menu works, you don't notice the labour behind it. The balance of fat, acid, salt, and texture reads as effortless. That effortlessness is the whole project.