Wanderlust Küche: a culinary summit for gourmets.

Street food, super food, craft beer - the world of eating and drinking is as dynamic as never before. Nothing connects people from different backgrounds as much as a pleasurable meal. With this in mind, the Goethe Institutes of Southeast Asia are bringing the countries of the region together around the table. During the course of- November 2018, the project Wanderlust Küche - A Culinary Dialogue will unite Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand under the motto Tafeln ohne Grenzen (Tables without Borders). For this particular part of the project, a professional German cook joins forces with a master chef from a partner country. Together they create an international menu for up to 120 guests. The project also stages numerous other events centring on the topic of culinary art and tradition.
 
Berlin-born chef Mirko Trenkner and Duangporn Songvisava - "Bo" - from Bangkok have more in common than their profession: the two top chefs are convinced that good food made from sustainable produce opens up people's minds. That is why they are both involved in this new Goethe-Institute project. Together they will be serving up some excellent joint creations, bringing Thais and Germans together in "Wanderlust Küche - A Culinary Dialogue".
 
On 14 November, they will be cooking a three-course menu for 120 guests at the Goethe-Institut in Bangkok. Both the planning and the shopping have been joint efforts. This innovative cultural format promoting international understanding brings delicious food to the table and, at the same time, breaks down old prejudices. Both the German and Thai cuisines have more to offer than the clichéd roast pork with dumplings or the classic Pad Thai.
 
Our guests at the round table are Thais and Germans, whose work is in some way related to the topic of "food and drink" and include a Bangkok-based German butcher, a Thai wheat beer brewer, the Thai founder of an NGO for sustainable organic food and a Thai-German food artist.
 
The dinner is an endeavour of the Goethe-Institut to bring food connoisseurs and experts from Germany and Southeast Asia around the table in a pleasurable way.
 
Mirko Trenkner and his colleagues Steffen Burkhardt and Helge Hagemann from the Hamburg chef collective Werteköche will travel from Thailand to seven other countries in Southeast Asia and to Australia and New Zealand. Their mission is to create a menu together with top local chefs. The Goethe Institutes of the participating countries will invite those who have contributed to the project for another friendly get together. These meetings will take place from mid November to early December in Bangkok, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and Wellington.

Language course participants and  walk-in guests can also take their seats at the large tables and be part of this extraordinary culinary summit meeting. In addition to the round tables, the Goethe-Instituts of the individual regions will have a supplementary programme of their own, including cookery classes, readings, culinary cinema, cookbook exhibitions and various workshops on subjects relevant to Wanderlust Küche In Bangkok, for example, German professional food photographer Manuel Krug will be giving a workshop with tips on how to take the perfect food photo (food porn).

This unusual cultural format aims to stimulate culinary dialogue between  the participating countries whilst simultaneously dispelling common prejudices about German cuisine, which has long been discredited as boring. Another primary focus of the project relates to sustainable food production and the preservation of traditional cooking.