If you want to eat differently, you have to cook differently. And if possible, also with different foods than before. This outlines three core components of the so-called “nutrition transition” that the green-red town hall coalition has set as its goal in its coalition agreement. On Tuesday evening it became the municipal one “House of Food” opened, which should be an important component of this nutritional transition. The aim here is to train kitchen teams from restaurants, canteens and other out-of-home catering establishments on how they can incorporate more seasonal organic food from the region into their daily menu.
“Haus der Kost” sounds pretty bombastic, after all, the name is based on the “Haus der Kunst” on Prinzregentenstrasse. Just as pompous as the middle hall in the original Foyer and auditorium in the “Munich Urban Colab” Not in the creative quarter on Dachauer Strasse, but they still do a lot. They just don’t belong permanently to the “Haus der Kost”, but only serve as a venue for the opening. Presumably because otherwise the 330 registered guests would not have been accommodated at all. Because the name “Haus der Kost” can be seen as a funny understatement. The “house” is more of a kind of granny flat on 125 square meters in the Munich Urban Colab, the co-working space for young start-up companies run jointly by the city and the Technical University of Munich. But “Granny Flat of Food” – what would that have sounded like?
In fact, it was all planned much more ambitiously – as a separate building with growing areas around it where vegetables and lettuce were to be planted, “urban gardening” under the instructions and active help of the city administration, so to speak. A site in Allach-Untermenzing was intended for this, but the city’s budget situation forced a more economical option, at least at the beginning.
And so the two nutritionists Karoline Stojanov and Silke Brugger from the city’s Department for Climate and Environmental Protection are now able to educate and train primarily cooks, but also interested laypeople, in the Munich Urban Colab in a training kitchen with three cooking islands. This should be done “practically and pragmatically,” said Second Mayor Dominik Krause (Greens) at the opening ceremony. They did not want to create a “house of education,” but rather a nutrition and advice center. “It’s the third of its kind in Germany,” says Krause, “it would almost have been the second after the Canteen of the Future in Berlin. But unfortunately Bremen beat us to it by a week with its new “Forum Kitchen.” The actual model is the Copenhagen House of Food, which was founded in 2007, had since gone bankrupt due to a lack of city funding, but has now been revived.
The two nutritionists Karoline Stojanov and Silke Brugger will be giving training courses at Haus der Kost in the future.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
Climate and environmental protection officer Christine Kugler also tried to dispel possible concerns that meat eaters were being tortured with vegan dishes in the “Haus der Kost” and even promised with a slight smile: “The currywurst can stay.” The facility should be “a hub for all topics related to nutrition” and help bring “food suitable for grandchildren” to people. The principle applies: “Demand determines supply.”
Holger Stromberg then explained what one could imagine in a short lecture. The youngest star chef in Germany at the age of 23, later head chef for the 2014 soccer world champions and current entrepreneur, was introduced, among other things, with the interesting job title of “culinary architect”, explained his idea of a “nutrition that serves the planet” and used this as an example the white sausage, which was supposedly invented out of necessity. He could also imagine such inventiveness, which leads to creative solutions, in the new “Haus der Kost”.
And he was also able to show a parallel to the world of football: it took eight years from the first idea for Franz Beckenbauer to realize the arena in the north of Munich, says Stromberg. At the “Haus der Kost” the time “until our own arena” was six years. It’s just a shame, says the culinary architect Stromberg, that all that came out of it was a school kitchen and a seminar room. But as is the case with the right diet: further growth is not ruled out, in fact it is to be expected.