• Food
  • Lost in Wedding: Veggies make a splash

Food

Lost in Wedding: Veggies make a splash

Every Tuesday the former swimming pool complex turned multi-use venue transforms into a gourmet vegetarian restaurant. While the meals are small, the price and taste are right – €7 and delicious. The next one happens on Oct 15.

Image for Lost in Wedding: Veggies make a splash
Photo by Jan Kapitän

Wedding’s Stattbad/Stattbar complex is a former swimming pool, exhibition space, club, café/bar and, every Tuesday evening, a gourmet vegetarian restaurant. “Lost in Wedding” has a pretty basic concept: every week, an affordable (recently dropped back down to €7 from €9.58) set menu of locally sourced produce is served up to a throng of thankful mouths. It’s gaining ground and popularity each week, drawing exactly the kind of young, relaxed international crowd you’d expect.

On arrival, you’re presented with red, blue and green raffle tickets (one each for starter, main course and dessert). After taking a seat at a candle- and flower-adorned table, you hand the tickets over to the waiter, who will then dutifully bring you a series of lovingly prepared dishes.

Organisers Sylvio Schubert and Maik Gyver describe the three-course menu as “subtle”, and it’s a fair enough adjective to use. Petite dishes fusing interesting ingredients together – the dark chocolate cake with lavender ice cream comes to mind – are indicative of a talented but decidedly frugal chef. Or rather, two rotating chef teams. Here’s introducing the Douwe Egbert brothers and Hans & Dampf; the former with a ‘down to earth’ style focussed on pushing natural flavours to create exciting dishes, and the latter specialising in fresh, colourful and seasonal offerings.

Past courses include white onion soup with amaretto flakes, coconut-coated goat cheese balls with almond and rose salt filling and tonka bean jelly with chocolate-coated wafer cigarettes. The fare is vegetarian most weeks, curiously accompanied by footage of happy, un-eaten farmyard chickens projected onto one of the walls. Self-righteous lecture or a tongue-in-cheek joke? The former would be quite hypocritical considering they’re also planning a carnivorous quail feast in the near future. Meat-lovers, watch out for “Wachteln in Wedding” coming up this month.

Those with a big appetite might do well to eat a sizable lunch so they’re not famished by dinnertime: Lost in Wedding’s offerings tantalise the tastebuds, but do little to fill the stomach. Still, at less than €10, the weekly meal is worth a spot on any vegetarian foodie’s to-eat list. We recommend also ordering the cocktail pairing (€8); there’s a new concoction each week. Yes, it’s more expensive than the three-course meal, but who can resist a well-made, potent punch?

For full menu details and to RSVP, check the Facebook event pages. So as not to be wasteful, the chefs prepare only enough food for the number of people who confirm as attending. The next happening on Tuesday, October 15, serves Stattbar guests an autumnal three-course menu including a main of chestnut polenta and spiced red cabbage with apple.

Lost in Wedding Stattbar, Gerichtstr. 65, Wedding, S-Bhf Wedding, Tue 19-23:00

Originally published in issue #120, October 2013.