The Open Kitchen meets weekly to cook and enjoy recipes from various corners of the world, creating a space for participants to connect and share their stories.
Everyone is welcome to lead cooking sessions, no matter their experience. Or just show up, chop some onions, and enjoy a meal in company. Since we started in 2013, we’ve celebrated a wide range of cooking traditions, from Sudanese to Syrian, from Sri Lankan to Swedish. In 2023, we published our first cookbook, “The Feast.”
Originally called the Refugee Cooking Group, the program goes back to very humble beginnings on Oranienplatz. Demonstrators occupied this Kreuzberg square in 2012-2014 to draw attention to the appalling living conditions forced on refugees all over Germany, at a time when this was hardly discussed in the media. Berliners met up at the square every week to cook in the tents and break down the walls created by terms like ‘refugee’, ‘migrant’, and ‘local’.
Since then, the group has cooked at the Gerhart Hauptmann Schule – the site of a major refugee rights protest in 2014 – as well as in Görlitzer Park and at the Martha Gemeinde Church. As of summer 2025, we are cooking together in our new space, the Blue House.
The response to Open Kitchen has been amazing! We’ve had the pleasure of serving food at various venues around Berlin, including Markthalle Neun, Bite Club, Berliner Philharmoniker Open Air, Brücke Museum, and many other wonderful places around Berlin.
We want Open Kitchen to be a home away from home and a place to feel a real sense of belonging.
