About

Behind Botanique

I previously worked as a sociologist, a researcher and a university lecturer; today, as a cook, the same curiosity drives me. I work with different materials, but the question is unchanged: how can observation become understanding, and understanding become creation of your own?

Botanique was born from this continuity: between the systematic thinking of research and the sensory, creative experience of plant-based cooking.

From research to plant-based cooking

In the first stage of my career I worked as a sociologist, a researcher and a university lecturer. My work centred on how complex phenomena can be observed, broken down into questions and arranged into understandable connections.

When I became a cook, I didn’t leave that way of thinking behind. In the kitchen I work with different materials and different tools, but I’m still interested in the processes: what changes an ingredient’s structure, flavour or behaviour, and how this can be shaped deliberately.

By the time I started working in a professional kitchen, I had long been living on a plant-based diet. So for me, plant-based cooking didn’t start from replacing meat dishes, but from the question of how to get the most out of a plant’s own properties.

Botanique began to take shape when this kitchen experience reconnected with the methods of research and teaching. It doesn’t seek to convey ready answers, but to give knowledge from which others, too, can understand, experiment and create on their own.

Practice and sharing knowledge

I work in professional kitchens as a cook, a pastry chef and a recipe developer. I’ve gained experience running my own hospitality venue, in restaurant teams and in independent projects.

My work centres on plant-based ingredients, fermentation, seasonal menu-building and technical precision. I treat recipes not as endpoints but as descriptions of processes that can be examined and understood: I look for what we change in an ingredient, how, and why.

For me, kitchen practice and recipe development belong to the same work: turning experience into precise, repeatable knowledge that can be developed further.

The forms of Botanique

Botanique isn’t a single publication or event. The same thinking appears in several forms, and each offers a different path from observation and understanding to practice and personal experience.

  • The book

    The book arranges the relationship between ingredients, techniques and kitchen decisions into a coherent system, leading from following recipes to creation of your own.

    About the book

  • Lab

    The Lab is Botanique’s experimental space: a place for observing, documenting and developing ingredients, techniques and processes of transformation.

    Explore the Lab

  • Workshops

    The workshops create a shared, hands-on setting for asking questions, trying things out and building the knowledge gained into your own work.

    Workshops

  • Dinners

    At the dinners, Botanique’s way of thinking becomes a fully composed form you can experience in person.

    Dinners

Contact

If you have a question about one of the forms of Botanique, or you’d like to initiate a professional collaboration, you can write directly on the contact page.

Get in touch