Das Kochhaus: Tante Emma with a Twist

A new kind of grocery store opened last month in Berlin-Schöneberg -- a store that makes you feel you are walking into a Nigella Lawson cookbook.

That's exactly the experience that Ramin Goo, the under-30 founder of Das Kochhaus, wants you to have (except, perhaps, for the Nigella Lawson bit).

Guess Who's Making Dinner
Goo knows from personal experience the frustration of returning home from work (he was a management consultant at McKinsey) and trying to make an inspired menu from weary-looking veggies at the back of the fridge. Neither did he feel like trawling through supermarket aisles, filling a grocery cart with random items. People needed an alternative, he decided. And it wasn't take-out.

The joy of cooking at home, says Goo, begins with the pleasure of shopping for food. That's why his store is not organized according to categories of produce but instead visualizes the process of reading (and being inspired by) an illustrated cookbook.

photo: courtesy, Das Kochhaus

Shopping by Storyboards
Each week, Goo and his team create recipes that combine seasonal freshness, creativity and simple elegance. Then they stock the store for that week according to the recipes.

photo: courtesy, Das Kochhaus

The aesthetic of the store is Zen-like. There are 20 tables and above each, a display poster in blackboard style, illustrating a recipe.  The ingredients are on the table, carefully measured for two, four or six, arranged as beautifully and symmetrically as in a Japanese bento box.

photo: courtesy, Das Kochhaus

The store itself is laid out as a kind of dinner storyboard. You move from the appetizer tables to the salad variations, on to the entrees, and finally, the dessert. Recommended wines are on each table, as are kitchen tools called for by a specific recipe: a nutmeg grater here, a garlic press there. No detail has been overlooked.

A New Kind of Tante Emma
When Goo first broached the idea to investors, it was met with skepticism. A start-up project with fruits and vegetables instead of the internet? Not exactly cutting-edge.

But Goo's idea has caught on. While the average supermarket has about 15,000 items, Das Kochhaus has around 500. On the one hand, it is a throwback to the Tante Emma Laden of the 1970s (pre-supermarket), the little family-run shop where you could stock up on kitchen, pantry and domestic needs in one stop. On the other, Das Kochhaus fast-forwards Tante Emma into the twenty-first century.

Personally, I prefer the chaotic shopping you tend to do in the weekly farmers' markets (where you pick up two kilos of porcini mushrooms, then concoct recipes around the reckless purchase), and I warm to the kitchen that never runs out of cinnamon or turmeric rather than one that sports tidy packages of three red chillies, two stalks of parsley and one clove of garlic. But then, that's just me.

Das Kochhaus was bustling with customers yesterday. Couples stood in front of the tables, discussing dinner possibilities. Should it be the pasta with shiitake mushrooms and diced ham in a rosemary sauce this evening, or would they dare to try the lentil and lychee curry?

Goo's team, creators of the world's first walk-in cookbook,  is already thinking of introducing cooking classes and expanding into other parts of Berlin and other cities in Germany.


For more information, photos, videos, press clippings (Das Kochhaus has extensive local, national and international press coverage) and the week's recipes, go to www.kochhaus.de. Recipe ingredients cost anywhere from 2,70 EUR per person to 9,50 EUR per person, and the package includes a recipe leaflet to take home. 


Das Kochhaus is open Mondays to Fridays, from 10:00 am to 09:00 pm, and on Saturdays from 09:00 am to 08:00 pm. It is located at Akazienstrasse 1 in Berlin-Schöneberg, at the corner of Akazienstrasse and Hauptstrasse. The nearest U-Bahn station in U Eisenachstr. (U7). Buses M48 and M85 have stops right outside the entrance.