Culinary Misfits is a design start-up exploring the intersection of design and sustainability with a primary focus on food culture and how we can be inspired to rethink how we approach natural foods.

The founders Lea Emma Rosa Brumsack and Tanja Krakowski began their collaboration during the start of 2012 with a series of successful “food-events” celebrating vegetables in their true form. The stars of these food events are the locally-grown vegetables themselves. On display normally is a wonderful assortment of crooked carrots, over-sized beets, and monster parsnips. These are veggies that would have otherwise been left behind on the farmers fields because consumers too often view these “odd” vegetables as being mutant and strange. To show that they are perfectly normal and nutritious they use them, together with other kinds of food culture misfits, in their delicious organic recipes. Some examples of those misfits are wild herbs, forgotten species like Teltower Parsnips, blue potatoes, bread from the day before or simply harvest left overs - saving all sorts of misfits along the way.

Their love of design and sustainability also extends to their food presentation which uses a charming mix of mismatched glasses and floral plates which they’ve inherited or gathered from local vintage markets.