The gardens are at their most abundant right now. Young beans, the first tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and lovely shiso leaves from Marcus . The first stone fruits of the season are beginning to appear, alongside beautiful current varieties.

The waters around Brittany are also producing some of their finest summer seafood. Wild tuna, sardines and horse mackerel, and blue lobster are all showing remarkable quality at the moment and will form an important part of the menu.

As always, the dinner will be shaped by what is tasting best in the days leading up to the event, with a focus on the produce. I will be unable to accommodate any allergies or dietary restrictions

The menu will be €140 per person

Please email dylan@ernstberlin.de

Looking forward to seeing you if you can make it work with your summer schedule.

And now to the announcement…

This autumn I will begin cooking weekly in the cave. There will be some changes made to the space and I am excited to welcome guests into this casual setting. I will cook one service per day for 9 guest 3 times a week. There will be more pratical details to follow. I will also excitedly be announcing new members to the team. I will to keep this more casual format with a continued more private format (think reservations by phone). After service is finished We will be open as a wine bar until the end of the night. Ernst cave will continue as a bar now by reservation a more extended food program on saturday’s and Sundays.

Closer to the opening date I will share more details.

Until then.

I hope you are relax and enjoy these summer days like soba

I will be cooking the 25th and 26th of June and the 23rd and 24th of July

As always the vibe will be casual.

I am unfortunately unable to accommodate any allergies or dietary restrictions.

The menu will be 140pp

If you would like to join please email me at dylan@ernstberlin.de

Dylan

The season is bringing young sugar peas, some of the last green asparagus, white asparagus, and beautiful heirloom varieties of German strawberries. I’ve also taken a few trips to the forest to forage wild strawberries. It is the beginning of the wild tuna and bonito season in Brittany, and we’re also seeing exceptional blue lobster.

I hope to see some of you if you can make it work with your summer schedule.

I still have a few seats available for dinner on Friday, June 19th. The remaining summer dates will be announced and released tomorrow.

At some point, I’ll also be sharing some news about what is happening this fall.

As always, the atmosphere will be casual. I’ll be cooking and serving myself, so unfortunately I won’t be able to accommodate allergies or dietary restrictions.

The menu is €140 per person.

If you would like to join in please email me at dylan@ernstberlin.de

Dylan

What I have recently begun to appreciate is LA’s diversity. After living for more than a decade in Europe, encountering different cuisines, perspectives, and even languages gives me a nostalgic feeling for where I grew up in Vancouver.

On this trip I had asked some friends (you know who you are) to put me in touch with a chef I had always followed and deeply admired. Junya was the founding chef of Koya, a restaurant in London originally intended to be a udon shop that eventually took on a culinary life of its own through a daily changing chalkboard menu inspired by English produce. During our conversation I learned that Junya found his way into cooking after studying art in Paris and taking a service job while studying at Rose Bakery. During his five years as chef, Koya became legendary. I only had the chance to eat there once before Junya moved back to Japan. I do not intend this to be a biography of Junya, but rather to give a bit of context to a lesser-known character in the culinary drama that is the food world. I would describe him as a chef’s chef.

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The mix of sun and rain has brought beautiful shades of asparagus, young tender leaves of kinome, and the beginning of the bigeye tuna season in Brittany.

Expect also uni, late spring shellfish, and a beautiful serving of beef.

Yesterday I picked up the first green strawberries from Marcus, who says this season may prove to be a once-in-a-century year for both the production and quality of his strawberries. This year he will also have his first modest crop of Brandenburg almonds (perhaps one small upside of climate change).

I’ll also be adding another dinner next Friday, May 29.

The menu for both evenings will be €140 per person (excluding tip).

As always, I won’t be able to accommodate allergies or dietary restrictions.

Please send me an email at dylan@ernstberlin.de if you would like to spontaneously join tonight or reserve a place for June 29.

Sincerely,

Dylan

On either side of some travel this month, I will be cooking in the cave.

The menu will follow the first vegetables of spring, alongside seafood, and some beautiful beef from Helga.

For those who have not been: in the cave I cook simply, but with precision. Mostly with the knife. Steaming, simmering, grilling, on a single induction, and a charcoal grill outside.

Before I head to New York to cook alongside Nick from Smithereens. I will hosting one dinner Thursday the 30th of April.

As always, expect casual service, great produce, and exciting wines from the Ernst cave list.

The menu will be 140pp.

Unfortunately, I am unable to accommodate allergies or dietary restrictions.

If you would like to join, please send a short email to dylan@ernstberlin.de

Seats are very limited. I will be back in mid May and cooking more regularly then.

Sincerely,
Dylan

The dates will be Thursday the 2nd of April, and Friday and Saturday the 10th and 11th.

As always, the produce will be good. The vibe will be casual and I will be cooking, serving, and pouring the wines.

Unfortunately I am unable to accommodate any allergies or dietary restrictions.

If you would like to join, please send me an email at
dylan@ernstberlin.de

Seats are limited.

Hopefully I’ll see you then, or at another point this spring.

Dylan

Preface: A long awaited continuation to a series I started last year, part 1 & 2 are recommended but not essential

After a couple of years of working together with Branca and her small farm, as we began preparing to open Ernst, Branca worried about the quantities we would need. She told us about farmers who used to come to markets in Berlin in the 90s and early 2000s, but who now only used a CSA method for selling their produce. Branca shared a phone number and, after several skeptical phone calls, we convinced them of our serious intent through the promise of a day of work on the farm.

The farm sits in northeastern Brandenburg. It was founded by Martin and Otrun, whom I would come to learn are two incredibly special people. They opened the farm with anthroposophical philosophy in mind during the former GDR nearly forty years ago. After several phone calls, we managed to organize a day to go out and work on the farm with the initial Ernst team.

As we arrived, we were greeted by a scene from a fantasy that felt almost cliché. An old, well-cared-for house covered in plants. A small stream ran alongside the house where, in former times, a water wheel had been used to power a mill. We were greeted by the multigenerational family in a sort of courtyard behind the house that linked it to a complex of other buildings and covered stables.

The matriarch, Otrun, spoke only German and the basic Russian she had learned in school during the GDR. She began explaining how the farm worked. She spoke German with a heavy accent, punctuated by the occasional word she knew in English. Martin spent the first minutes with a large knife in his hand, carving a new tooth for a rake out of wood. I have to admit that this was initially unnerving. After he finished, he finally looked up and smiled. He then joined the conversation, speaking almost exclusively about the soil. He spoke of it almost as a friend, something that needed to be carefully tended with the help of their horses.

Afterward we were given a tour of the immediate area around the house, which included a large glasshouse, makeshift nursery spaces, and long rows of raspberry bushes. Great organic farms have a kind of chaos that at first glance is hard to understand, but with a little reflection you begin to feel that every seemingly misplaced piece of wood or pile of equipment is exactly where it needs to be.

The farm was quite a lot larger than Branca’s, stretching behind the house across three large fields, with a small road connecting to the next village running between them. The stream alongside the house turned left and slowed, dividing the field behind the house in half. These parcels, like much of Brandenburg, consisted primarily of quartz-rich sandy soils. They told me that they farmed another piece of land in the neighboring town—an ancient lakeshore with heavy clay soils—where they grew more soil-intensive crops like beets.

The first field was pasture, with sheep and Jersey cows on either side of the river. A wooden bridge allowed you to cross the widening stream and turn onto a path that ran parallel to the field.

We walked along the field until we reached our work for the day. Most of the work on the farm was done by hand or by horse. In all honesty I can’t remember what we were tasked to do. I can only remember the feeling and the brilliance of that sunny day.

After we finished, we were invited back to the house for lunch at a long table by the river. At lunch I learned that they were essentially subsistence farmers, which in terms that affected me meant that the best produce went to the family to eat.

The meal is something I haven’t forgotten. It was vegetarian, composed of their summer vegetables. What stood out especially was a serving of cauliflower, which I was told was only grown for the family.

I had reservations about the esoteric nature of biodynamics, but what I tasted that afternoon quietly converted me.

After the meal we walked the fields. Each field was surrounded by edible trees: wild plums, mirabelle, rosehip, wild roses, German blackberry, even goji. The growing area was then subdivided into long rectangular plots by rows of old apple, quince, cherry, and pear trees. Only on later visits did I come to understand that each tree was a different variety, and that only Otrun knew them all. This experience was a revelation to me, seeing the diversity of ingredients possible from that level of agriculture.

This was the first of many visits. We began a rather unusual relationship, which staff from that time could attest to, marked by the bizarre timing of their produce deliveries often arriving during dinner service. It was always difficult to order concretely from them, as they never published any kind of list. Most of the produce we received were things that I had noticed growing there on subsequent visits. This made things imperfect; sometimes we got too much of one thing or not enough of another.

The quality of the vegetables greatly outweighed the inconvenience. That quality came from their entire approach to life, and in turn to agriculture, which even extended to their seeds, which were saved and replanted each year. Seed saving over time allowed the genetics of the crops to slowly adapt to the unique conditions of their farm, contributing in some small part to the deliciousness of the produce. It was a kind of long conversation between the land and the plants.

The lessons I took from these visits slowly changed the way I cooked at Ernst. I wanted to share with guests the experience I had of eating the produce among the rows in the warm afternoon sun.

The photos were taken in 2018 by inga

footnotes

*Community Supported Agriculture

** a philosophy developed by the Austrian thinker Rudolf Steiner

Elements of sustainability have always had a place within my philosophy of cooking. That being said, I have always found sustainability to be a somewhat odd concept while living and working in a city. Systems are abstracted. There is an inherent disconnection between urban life and the finite nature of our natural environment. This is not to say that we shouldn’t strive for a sustainable way of life in our metropolitan centers - we absolutely should. But drawing a clear line between our actions and the pressure they put on the non-urban world can be difficult.

Plastic pollution has very few visible long-term impacts while living life in a city centre. Plastic used in consumer goods is thrown into the trash, and when plastic garbage appears on the street it is cleaned up and taken away. This has remained largely true for most of the 20th and 21st centuries. The advent of modern technologies in food packaging and handling has seemingly had only positive impacts on food systems, contributing to food security and, in turn, longer lifespans.

Individually packaged cucumbers wrapped in plastic, which I have seen in Japan, might signify a high point in cleanliness and order. The consumer doesn’t need to interact with dirt, bruised fruit, or greenery. I was taught that this is the mark of a highly organized and efficient society.

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For me, the mark of a great learning experience is finishing with more questions than you started with. This feat was achieved in stunning fashion. I will begin with some technical details.

There are extreme differences between sushi and kaiseki when it comes to the breakdown, storage, process, and preparation of fish and seafood. I saw in real time the myriad salting techniques, brining, marination, and numerous seasoning methods that I had never encountered in my limited time in a kaiseki kitchen.

I came to realize that certain techniques are optimized for speed and less so for precision, or for highlighting particular aspects of a product. For example, scallops (which I tend to open and shuck as close to serving as possible) can benefit from air drying or specific storage techniques to achieve a particular texture and mouthfeel. Even something as simple as wrapping fish was turned on its head: the type of paper used, how it is layered, how much moisture we want to draw out, or not draw out. This extended to the breakdown and storage throughout the day, using different absorbent or non-absorbent materials depending on the fish and the intention.

I could write an entire post purely about these technical learnings alone.

The first few days were admittedly hectic. Restarting a dormant restaurant after a year of closure is far more complicated than I could have imagined. The thousands of small details and systems that were built over years need to be reassembled.

Once things settled, I had the chance, as we worked during the day, to speak with Endo-san about how and why he made the decisions he did with each piece of seafood for example why he would brine sardines instead of dry salting , how much salt he used, and what he was looking for when they were seasoned correctly.

What I soon learned from his answers was that he was reading the fish. Each fish told a different story based on its ever-changing characteristics. He has a deep respect for the fish, and the techniques he uses are meant to enhance the fish’s inherent qualities. Varying levels of fat require adjustments, sometimes minor, sometimes major. Each fish is treated as something new each day. A technique used yesterday may need to be adapted today, as the texture of the fish can change drastically between the first and second day.

There is an ever-changing dance to create balance between the texture and flavour of the fish and the shari.

The rice.

Sushi, in its purest form, is fish and rice. Yet as my appreciation of sushi has grown over the years, the shari (the vinegared rice) has taken on an increasingly central role in the construction of nigiri.

The rice is washed and soaked in the morning. We used a Turkish brand of soft water, the same one I used for making dashi in my apartment before installing a water filter (which, incidentally, was malfunctioning during the week of our pop-up).

For each service, the rice was cooked three times. It was cooled and mixed in the hangiri, then seasoned with a blend of sushi vinegars. The rice changes dramatically over time, the seasoning slowly mellowing and integrating. Endo-san paired his fish according to the balance and temperature of the rice throughout the service.

At times, this pairing confused me from a purely flavour-based perspective. The progression of fish or shellfish felt intuitively unusual at first, until I began to account for the flavour balance and temperature of the shari. This was something I had noticed during my first experience working with Endo-san in 2023: his close attention to minute changes in the temperature of the rice, which created striking sensations in combination with the fish.

One of the more striking aspects of my experience with Endo was his deep respect for tradition. Endo is a third-generation sushi chef; his father and grandfather ran a sushi-ya in Yokohama. He once told me a story about meeting the architect Kengo Kuma, who, as a young boy, ate at his grandfather’s shop every second weekend with his father.

Endo-san said something to me that I still reflect on months later: to preserve tradition, you must innovate.

Without a deep understanding of tradition, innovation lacks grounding. I came to see that this phrase truly embodied Endo-san. Tradition is important to learn and respect, but it is equally important as a foundation from which to build and carry something forward. This is a trait I recognize in many chefs I deeply respect, those who come from strong traditional foundations and use that base to innovate, sometimes more in mindset than in technique. They pay attention to particular details that set their cuisine apart.

I believed that at Ernst I took a great deal of care with fish and seafood. This experience humbled me in the best possible way and exposed me to a new horizon. That level of attention to detail can extend far beyond fish, into other produce, and even into entirely different avenues of cooking.

I much prefer this kind of experience cooking together with another chef. Over the 7 days of service here is a list of some of the different products we served.

• Tai

• Kasugo

• Saba

• Ankimo

• Hotate

• Aji

• Madai

• Amaebi

• Botan-ebi

• Akami

• Chūtoro

• Ōtoro

• Hamaguri

• Ishidai

• Ikura

• Uni

• Kue

• Hirame

• Unagi

• Iwashi

• Torigai

• kaki

I would like to finish with a big thank you to Endo-san his Team and Ryan for letting me run a beautiful sushi-ya at ernst for two unforgettable weeks. also a thank you to Raebun for the lovely photos.

As usual the vibe will be relax I will be cooking and serving. At the moment we have a beautiful selection of wines at the cave, especially coming from young wine makers in the Jura.

There will be a focus on seafood and winter citrus and sweeting cellared vegetables. Last week the star of the show was beautiful hand dived uni in the best quality so far of the year.

The menu will be 130pp

Unfortunately I am unable to accommodate any allergies or dietary restrictions.

There will only be 9 seats at the counter so please understand that places are very limited.

If you would like to join in Please email me at.

dylan@ernstberlin.de

Thank you to Max and Alex for the photo

I spent the last week at Restaurant etz in Nuremberg. I had last cooked with Felix, Thomas, and Stefan seven years ago at Sosein. It was incredible to see their development, how they have fine-tuned and expanded their fermentation techniques, and the incredible assortment of ingredients available to them from the region of Franconia.

Dry-aged catfish tails. Winter horseradish you’d swear was wasabi. Ginger. Pickled curcumin. Fresh Judas ear mushrooms. A fantastic quality of aromatic, glasshouse-grown citrus. And many other things you would never imagine were produced in Franconia.

More than their techniques or produce, what struck me most was the uniqueness of their approach to running a restaurant. Etz is an incredibly singular place, and if you haven’t been, I would highly recommend a visit.

I will be cooking at the Cave on Saturday, February 21st, and Thursday, February 26th.

As always, the vibe will be casual. Winter citrus and seafood will dominate the menu.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to accommodate allergies or dietary restrictions, as I will be preparing and serving the meal alone.

The menu will be €130 per person.

Please email dylan@ernstberlin.de if you would like to join.

P.S. I’ll share a recap of my experience working with Endo and his team soon.

Sincerely,
Dylan

Dylan

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The intensity of those final years took a toll on me in ways I could only understand with the space I’ve had this year. That distance and the support of others has helped me understand myself better, and also feel genuinely proud of the work we did at Ernst.

With all of this in mind, I’m happy to announce the final two dinners of 2025: the first on December 4th and the second on December 18th.

These dinners will focus on winter produce. Expect hand dived scallops, beautiful petit violet sea urchin reminiscent to me of Akka uni in both aroma and salinity, alongside roasted duck, seasonal winter vegetables, and citrus.

The menu will be 130€ per person.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to accommodate allergies or dietary restrictions for these evenings.

To secure a seat ,please email me at dylan@ernstberlin.de

I’ll also soon share details about a sushi collaboration with Endo san, with whom we cooked in 2023. My Substack paid subscribers will have the opportunity to reserve seats ahead of the public release. We will be cooking together from December 10th to 14th, creating a sushi menu centered around the incredible fishermen and divers we worked with at Ernst and continue to work with at the cave and at Julius.

Sincerely,
Dylan

With the last leaves on the trees, cool nights, and damp forest air, I’ll be cooking once again in the cave.

Expect autumn vegetables, wild-foraged mushrooms and fruit, and the first purple sea urchin of the season. As the water temperature drops, the fish begin to fatten and reach their peak condition.

Over the past few dinners, I’ve found myself returning to familiar form and a great deal of joy in sharing my cooking with the wonderful guests who have joined me so far.

The service will be casual, with a focus on high-quality ingredients and simple but precise technique, paired with wines from the cave’s cellar.

The menu will be 130€ per person.

The upcoming dinners will take place on Thursday, November 6th, and Thursday, November 13th.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to accommodate allergies or dietary restrictions.

If you’d like to join, please write to dylan@ernstberlin.de.

Looking forward to seeing you,

Dylan

Update: All seats for both dinners are now filled. Please email if you would like to be on the waitlist. Dinners for November and December will be released soon.

After a week in Japan, and as we move into the heart of autumn, I’m excited to announce a dinner on the 10th and 16th of October.

The menu will feature the first-aged duck from the Forest Quarter in Austria, beautiful autumn vegetables, and some remarkable katsuo-bushi that I brought back from Japan.

The menu is €120 per person.

As always, you can expect a relaxed atmosphere where I’ll be cooking and serving both food and wine over the course of the evening.

If you’d like to attend, please email dylan@ernstberlin.de.
Seats are extremely limited.

We loaded Soba into the car and headed to his farm in Potsdam to pick some beautiful fruits and vegetables for the dinners I’ll be cooking this week in the cave. Over the years, Marcus’s family farm has blossomed into something extraordinary: a collection of projects and crops you’d hardly imagine growing in Germany, let alone on a former East German farm.

Myoga, ten varieties of cold-weather figs, heritage strawberries (from Manfred Hans, a character I’ll write more about in a future post), passionfruit, four types of sansho, nashi pears, ginger, Japanese eggplants, peaches, edamame, and his beloved persimmons are just a few of the unusual species Marcus has nurtured, often with a bit of convincing, into staples of his yearly harvest.

Here are some images from our visit, gathering produce for the cave dinners happening today and tomorrow.

Summer is slowly turning to fall, with late-season stone fruit, the first autumn vegetables, some of the last blue skin fish of summer, and very special beef from Helga.

The dates will be Thursday the 11th, the 18th, and the 19th of September.

120pp

As always, there are 9 seats available each evening, and I can only accommodate minor dietary restrictions or allergies.

The dinners will be laid back, with all cooking and serving done by me.

Please email dylan@ernstberlin.de for a reservation.

A Photo from the garden taken by my friend Mustafah

Our cheap flight from Beijing landed two hours late. The only connecting bullet train from Tokyo to our destination would get us in at 17:14; our reservation was for 17:00. I was petrified. In Japan, being late is considered impolite, something I’d been told again and again - you just don’t do it. Especially not for what is, for me, perhaps the most captivating restaurant there is. I sent a message to Meg, bracing for the worst. Thankfully, she was understanding, reminding me that we might miss a few courses but to get there as quickly as possible.

In late 2024, Meg had been dining at Ernst for the last time. At the end of the meal, we were talking about Japanese ingredients, and it came up that Inga (my girlfriend) and I hadn’t been to Japan outside of January in over a decade. With Ernst closing that November, Meg suggested we visit during hotaru ika (firefly squid) season, typically the first few weeks of April. The one restaurant where we could enjoy the simplest yet highest-quality preparation was, of course, Kataori, a notoriously difficult-to-book kaiseki restaurant in Kanazawa, run by a husband-and-wife team. Eight seats, one seating per day. Chef Kataori-san collects the water and produce each morning from where he grew up in Toyama.

Toyama Bay, just next door, is the most famous place for catching hotaru ika in Japan, one of the few places where you can have them served tategi style: poached live, in their purest form. This would be our second visit to Kataori.

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