Kitchen Meetup: BITTER LEAVES

How does bitterness make dishes well-rounded, exciting and distinctive?
The kitchen meetup at Restaurant Trio Berlin focused on radicchio and bitterness as a conscious choice for flavour, variety and seasonality, extending well into winter.

The kitchen meetup covered a wide range of topics, spanning the journey from field to plate: from variety, seeds and cultivation right through to very specific culinary approaches to bitterness. ‘Mr Radicchio’, Andrea Ghadina from Smarties.bio, brought his knowledge straight from the field – from Castelfranco to Treviso – and highlighted just how much timing, variety and origin shape the flavour.

In conversation and on the plate, it became clear just how versatile bitterness can be conceived and presented: as a natural component of Korean cuisine, as demonstrated by Jinok Kim-Eicken from Nanum Berlin with fermented bitter lettuces, kimchi and freshly baked pancakes; as part of a holistic, regional approach at Vadim (otto), for example with jam made from radicchio stalks or bitter lettuces in warm bagna cauda with Stechlin Moräne and fermented gooseberries; and as a robust yet cautionary flavour with health benefits, as Martin Höfft and Jannis Hassel from Cafe Bonatinco explained, brought to life in confit radicchio with almond biscuits, Amarena cherries and a radicchio and Gorgonzola cream. Yummm!