The Center for Genomic Gastronomy

TRANSITION FROM CRITICAL BIOTECH TO CELEBRATING AG BIODIVERSITY (2010-2026)

Over the last decade our artistic research has transitioned from a focus on critical biotechnology to a celebration of Agricultural Biodiversity. During the development of projects like Food Forest Taste Test (FFTT) and Biodiversity in Transition Zones (BITZ, EAT.BITZ, Eyes on the Field) we have looked closely at place & taste, evolving foodways, and the relationship between tradition and innovation in agroecological transformations. 

GARDENS AND THE ART OF NOTICING (2024-2026)

During this period, the Genomic Gastronomy Garden at Amstel Park (GGG) has been our testing ground for assembling edible biodiversity over many seasons and in collaboration with visiting publics. The garden is a space to cultivate a sustained relationship to place and an embodied attentiveness to taste & biodiversity.

One of the great joys of spending one day each week in the garden is noticing the fluctuating configurations of birds, frogs, worms, beetles, grasses, herbs, shadows, puddles, clouds and flowers. In short, we gave ourselves—and our visitors—a chance to slow down and practice the art of noticing.  

FOOD FOREST TASTE TEST(S)

We received the keys to the garden plot in the late spring of 2024 and provisionally dubbed the project “the Genomic Gastronomy Garden”. We spent the remainder of 2024 getting to know the site’s history, documenting its ecological flows and observing what changed. In the last month of 2024, we made our biggest ecological intervention by planting a selection of Dutch Food forest ingredients in a circle around the main tree in the garden.

These plants were not arranged spatially with the intention to grow into a functioning food forest (we don’t have tenureship for that kind of longer-term agroecological commitment) but rather as a place to touch, taste and interact with the common species and cultivars that are starting to be (re)deployed in alternative food projects throughout the Netherlands. This was the final distillation of our Food Forest Taste Test research and a means of maintaining a relationship with the plants and ingredients which we have gotten to know in our research. 

DATASCAPES OF BIODIVERSITY

In addition, we used the garden space as one of two main testing grounds for bitz.tools “a digital tool for identifying and learning about the organisms around you.” The other location we have been testing this digital tool is in the rural hinterlands of Porto, Portugal where Venn Canteen sources the ingredients for its vegetarian menu. At GGG in Amstel Park we were able to invite in many different groups to conduct digital and analogue biodiversity assessments. What could we do with this data? In the spring of 2026 we released a draft datascape using the botanical and ecological information collected with BITZ in Portugal. 

See full EAT.BITZ demo here >>>

We are now wondering how and if we might translate the BITZ data we have collected from the Genomic Gastronomy Garden into something meaningful for ourselves and visitors to the garden. One of our collaborators is exciting about porting this datascape into a VR experience, and we do like the image of a single person exploring VR in a small garden shed at the back of the garden, we are imagining other manifestations of this data that might be less optical and more tangible or embedded in the garden itself. 

GGG IS NOW: “EXTREME SALAD WORLD”

Also, we have a big theme and name change underway. The Genomic Gastronomy Garden will soon be renamed: “the Extreme Salad Garden.”  

As we observed the wild volunteer species that began to populate the garden space in 2024 and 2025 we were also working on a documentary called Extreme Salad Man about Stephen Barstow’s near-arctic year-round garden in the North of Norway. 

Many of the species that are in Stephen Barstow’s wild edible garden were also showing up in our garden here in Amsterdam. Here are a few of the edible wild species that we identified in early April 2026: 

After getting to know the existing ecology and soils of the Genomic Gastronomy Garden space, and slowly making various interventions over 2 years, we finally had a eureka moment about how this garden could be framed so it had a more precise focus: EXTREME SALAD WORLD. This focus will allow us to continue our investigations into edible biodiversity, but specifically focus on cultivating and welcoming in a more narrow band of edible species: wild & cultivated species that can be eaten without being cooked. 

We have running water, but no heat on site, and we want visitors to be able to touch & taste with ease. This slightly narrowed focus helps us make selections and decisions about what to grow and how they relate to each other. In order to make salads that strive for the biodiversity present in Stephen Barstow’s salads, we need to steward 200+ plants. That is a lot of difference to manage and know about. We have a notion that LLMs can help us manage this level of complexity. So far this year, we have been relying on a model that is provided with the context of EXTREME SALAD WORLD to help us identify, cluster and care for many more cultivars of plants than we are able to in previous years. 

See EXTREME SALAD MAN trailer here >>>

AI DOES MY PAPERWORK SO I CAN FOCUS ON FARMING

This insight was inspired by a conversation with an organic / bio farmer in Porto who explained that in the EU one needs to fill out separate paperwork for each species on a farm that one wants to get bio certification for. This inadvertently penalizes agricultural biodiversity by raising the reporting burden, and is one of the reasons many bio farms tend towards monoculture, even though that seems counter to the whole undertaking of environmental health. The farmer described the way they used LLMs to simplify their record keeping, saying: “AI does my paperwork, so that I can focus on Farming”. We hope to build on this insight and see if AI can help us manage complexity in small area and help us reach towards maximizing the biodiversity of taste at EXTREME SALAD WORLD. 

….

More on EXTREME SALAD WORLD here and in future blog updates.

Post (3/3): ATTENDEES

The purpose of the tour was for a group of experts to witness the large-scale infrastructure projects that are in development, while discussing alternative Egyptian food futures that are more biodiverse, just & beautiful. Speculative recipes were served throughout the tour, guiding us in asking “what if” questions about tomorrow, while we view the vast development projects that are happening today.

The Attendees on the trip had diverse expertise and interests relating to food systems from academia, activism, the arts and journalism.

—

Post (1/3) identified the DESTINATIONS.
In Post (2/3) we describe the RECIPES.
—

MOCK WILD PICNIC: EGYPT was a catered bus tour for tasting divergent food futures and visiting the engineered arable landscapes emerging around the New Delta megaproject in the desert west of Cairo, Egypt.

It builds on MOCK WILD: EGYPT (ver. 1.0) presented @Cairotronica in May, 2025.
—

w/ @hala_n_barakat@monaelsabbahy@elfekyesraa@yasmineelmeleegy

Supported by @stimuleringsfonds#ClimateJustice

Over the past ten years, many food forests have been planted in the Netherlands. They are often mostly viewed through an ecological lens, focusing on soil health and biodiversity, while their potential to bring food forest ingredients to the market and into our everyday kitchens remains under-explored. A true forest food culinary culture has yet to emerge.

With the Food Forest Taste Test project, we set out to explore what such a culture could look like, connecting farmers, chefs and other early adopters, and prototyping cultural approaches. In this blog post, we share some of our findings.

Imagining food forest chains

On Monday, the 8th of November, over 40 curious eaters, makers and growers came together at MidWest to dream up futures for food forests. Two themes kept bubbling up: helping consumers and chefs recognise these flavours, and building the chains to get them onto our plates. The event started off with presentations, then round table discussions and ending with a presentation of goods from three food forests. 

Manon Botha from Voedselboswinkel reminded us that new tastes need to be introduced in a familiar way, for example, turning rosehips into ketchup or pickles makes them less intimidating and easier to use. Saskia Bronts, who forages wild ingredients for Restaurant Rotonde in Rotterdam, swings by the kitchen every Tuesday morning with her finds, sparking curiosity and giving chefs a gentle nudge toward new flavours. Besides recognition, Marieke from Boslekker also talked about creating a strong supply chain so these ingredients can move from niche to mainstream. Boslekker tries to tackle this by coordinating harvests and developing shelf-stable products. Some wild ideas that came up through the round table discussions were: creating a local food hub dedicated to processing and distributing food forest ingredients, proposing a food forest edition of Heel Holland Bakt and creating Food Forest Junk Food to meet consumers where they are at.

Tasting the harvest of the season

On Friday, September 12, we hosted the ‘Streek Smaken Diner’ at Thuishaven in Flevoland, introducing the neighbouring farmers and local policymakers to the concept of a food forest. Chefs Tess and Tessa transformed the season’s harvest into playful hybrid recipes, blending food forest ingredients with regional agricultural products. Together, we explored how food forests could weave themselves into regional agriculture, growing from one-off experiments into a living, connected Flevoland food system.

The Food Forest Taste Test project was generously supported by the Fresh Perspectives funding stream of the Stimuleringsfonds.

We were tasked with imagining a solo show that would bring together a set of our projects in order to create a larger and resonant story about food systems, taste, place & change. Our projects are usually created in relation to a specific site and audience, and some amount of work is necessary to draw together the different geographies and communities represented in the works to create a synthesized and coherent narrative. 

We Wrote: 

The exhibition theme “DATABASES OF TASTE” explores the ways that computers and the internet have impacted our work in creative food futuring. How can data driven systems and recombinatorial approaches to food culture open up new possibilities or ignite unexpected food futures that are grounded in material reality?

Genomic Gastronomy is an art collective based in Amsterdam & Porto that has created work about food, ecology & technology for the last 15 years. We would like to prepare for a solo exhibition called DATABASES OF TASTE.

This is a chance to assemble and refine a set of artworks and archival materials with shared themes, completed during the last decade, in preparation for a gallery exhibition. We will use our studio time to make connections between the work through reflective writing, reprinting materials, updating our website and refurbishing the artworks.

In addition to the work within our studio in Amsterdam, we will invite one critic and one curator for studio visits to gather feedback and insights on how this set of works can be brought together to be more than the sum of its parts. 

Anyone have the resources to liberate our work week to do this work, or the space to host an exhibition? 🙂 Get in touch: info@genomicgastronomy.com

—

Our previous projects that we would include in this process are: 

MOCK WILD (2023-ongoing)
EYES ON THE FIELD (2024-ongoing)
TERROIR THAT TRAVELS (2023-2025)
NEW NATIONAL DISH (2016-2023)
LOCI FOOD LAB (2014-2019)
SPICE MIX SUPER COMPUTER (2012-2015)

—

A manifesto for flavor-heads, biodiversity junkies, and edible flower bros.

Bro. Seriously. WHY AREN’T YOU BIO-MAXXING?

Do you even edible flowers, bro? Do your smoothies contain anything other than banana and sad imported strawberries? When was the last time your stir fry featured a vegetable that wasn’t a bell pepper or “baby” spinach? (What is that baby even doing in your wok?)

We live in a golden age of food mediocrity. And it shows. According to the FAO, 75% of the world’s food comes from just 12 plants and 5 animal species. That’s not a menu — that’s a death drive. Meanwhile, the average grocery store carrot tastes like wet cardboard that’s been emotionally neglected since 1993.

It’s time to BIO-MAXX. That means maximum flavor, maximum nutrients, maximum ecological intelligence. It means stuffing your life (and your face) with as many species, cultivars, landraces, and foraged weirdos as your foodshed can handle.

Eat like a forest, not like a factory.

Here’s how you start:

1. Cook like a chaotic botanist.
Start counting. Literally. How many species are in your pantry right now? If your “variety” means 3 kinds of pasta and two types of tomato sauce, you’re doing it wrong. Cook with color and chaos. Use ancestral grains, bitter greens, overlooked tubers, legumes that come in colors you didn’t know nature invented. Make ferments from wild brassicas. Throw in an amaranth leaf just to flex.

2. Source like your supply chain depends on it (because it does).
Build relationships with seed savers, rogue farmers, and that one guy at the farmers’ market selling purple peas and celtuce. Choose foods that aren’t monoculture-mafia staples. Push your grocery store to stock varietals you can’t pronounce. Ask restaurants where they get their ingredients — then ask why they’re not serving huitlacoche dumplings or dandelion pesto. Press the issue. Be annoying. Your gut microbiome will thank you.

3. Winter? Pickle it, dry it, cellar it, don’t despair it.
Local biodiversity doesn’t die in December. It transforms. Stockpile fermented garlic scapes, freezer-dried alpine strawberries, jars of pickled purslane. “…people’s current desire for food that is ‘never out of season’ creates a fragile agricultural system; it fosters monocultures (…) and takes away the rich abundance of flavours, textures and ways of living that used to accompany the wide variety of local foods.” Translation? Eat your sour plums and chill.

But why tho?

Because your flavor palette is a political act. Because monoculture kills the planet and your vibe. Because eating 20 plant species a week isn’t radical — it’s normal (or was, until global agribusiness erased it). “No matter where you live, you have the memory of something you used to eat that is no longer a part of your diet – something your grandmother used to make, something a small shop used to carry. Something we have lost.” wrote food scholar Simran Sethi in Bread, Wine, Chocolate. “This extinction is a process; it happens one meal at a time.” You want to be part of that gray goo future? Or you wanna crunch on crimson sunchokes and weep with joy?

Biodiverse diets are tied to better health outcomes too. More species = more nutrients = more ways to NOT get scurvy in your 30s, Chad.

Oh, and let’s not forget flavor. Dan Saladino (a.k.a. the David Attenborough of obscure foods) wrote in Eating to Extinction that:

Over millennia, food, cooking and eating became the most powerful expression of the human imagination. So, when a food becomes endangered, another seed lost, another skill forgotten, it is worth remembering the epic story of how they got here.”
Every time you choose a purple daikon over a bland cucumber, you’re saving a narrative from extinction. Bite by bite.

At-home bio-hacks

1. Color quota challenge – seven colors a day, no excuses.
2. Ingredient roulette – spin a wheel and land on sorrel, sea buckthorn, or salsify. Cook it. Eat it. Brag.
3. Micro-microgreens – sprout six species at once. Your windowsill is now a rainforest understory.
4. Do you even edible flowers, bro? Nasturtium deadlifts your salad aromatics; dianthus adds vanity-mirror vibes.

Supply-chain side quests

• Ask your grocer for “the weird stuff.” Purple yam, pigeon pea, African spider plant—whatever isn’t already cash-cropped into oblivion.
• Shop seed catalogs like sneaker drops. Limited-edition landraces > limited-edition Jordans.
• Signal-boost polyculture producers—share their CSA boxes like you share cat memes.

So here’s your final wake-up bite:

If your plate looks like a cornfield, you’ve already lost.
If it looks like a forest floor, you’re BIO-MAXXING.

Eat aggressively. Eat diversely. Eat like the future of flavor depends on it — because it absolutely does.
Now go out there and ask your barista for tulsi and sea buckthorn oat milk.
Be the chaos you want to taste in the world.

#BiomaxxOrBust
#DoYouEvenEdibleFlowersBro

Project Summary

In 2025 we are building on our work of Food Forest Taste Test with a new round of Food Forest Taste Test events (FFTT).  We want to refine and expand our experiments to engage a broader range of eaters.

The food forest movement has been gaining momentum in recent years, both internationally and here in the Netherlands, as a response to the urgent question: how can we grow food sustainably? This movement has been lead by activists and farmers. While a great deal of work has been done on the side of designing, planting and maintaining a food forest, less people are exploring how to integrate these new and novel ingredients into daily cooking.

Food forests offer a wide range of benefits: increased biodiversity, greater resilience to drought and flooding, and long-term soil health. But they also present unique challenges. The ingredients in food forests are uncommon and diverse. The experts at haute cuisine restaurants can creatively incorporate these ingredients, but what would you do with a cola plant? Or with ‘Hemelsleutel’ or ‘Lievevrouwebedstro’? While the fine dining resturant De Nieuwe Winkel has done amazing things with food forest ingredients and produced a beautiful cookbook, everyday eaters have little knowledge around using these ingredients in their kitchens, at home or commercially.

Food Forest Taste Test is a project that develops the rituals, rhythms, and recipes needed to bring micro-seasonal, food forest produce into daily life.

By optimizing for flavour we hope to contribute to growing a larger network of people who engage with and care about eating from resilient agro-ecosystems.

FRESH PERSPECTIVE: PHASE 2 

We have received a Fresh Perspectives grant from the Creative Industries fund to work with innovative food forest producers to prototype desirable food futures. The aesthetic and cultural components of cuisine, flavour, and social conviviality must be considered when imagining a more just, biodiverse & beautiful food system. For Phase 2, we aim to address climate issues by prototyping aesthetic and cultural approaches to boosting food forest ingredient uptake.

To kick off phase 2 or this project, we traveled to Flevoland to meet with Anje Portman on April 1, 2025, and visit three different food forest sites that she has designed, initiated and/or helped to develop:

• — Thuishaven
• — Het Lydia Waterreus Voedselbos
• — Voedeselbos Eemvallei Zuid

Each site was at a different scale, and had very different for plans for how it was to be managed, maintained and harvested in the future. 

SITE 1: THUISHAVEN (2 Hectare + Additional Hectare )

In 2024 our studio visited Thuishaven and cooked with ingredients at multiple points in the growing season. 

Within the Thuishaven site there are three areas: 

— The romantic food forest (planted in 2018) of 2 hectare.
— The production food forest (planted in 2021/2022) of an additional hectare.
— A wild edible garden.

We have previously written about this site during our 2024 visit, but as a reminder, the surrounding landscape consists of neighboring conventional farms laid down in rows, and power-producing wind farms (also laid down in rows).

One quote from today’s visit: “Every day I discover new plants and animals. You’d wish for people to connect like that too — connection takes time, just like a food forest takes ten years to grow.” – Iris.

Field Notes: The interesting interplay between the romantic forest and the productive forest — that they are informing each other. For example, in the ‘romantic forest’ they discovered a delicious pear, which led them to cultivate more of it in the productive forest. So food production is also led by taste. 

The importance of Art and Symbolism: There is a small hill in the center of the romantic food forest and at the top of it is a boat, indicating sea level. Seeing the boat sculpture above your head helped orient you to the sea level, and remind you that this land is underwater. 

SITE 2: Het Lydia Waterreus Voedselbos (1 Hectare)

“The Lydia Waterreus Food Forest is an educational, novel food forest, open to all residents of Zeewolde. The food forest is on land owned by the municipality of Zeewolde and is managed by a regular group of volunteers from IVN Zeewolde.” (link)

Field Notes: Some sections of the site were well-established and very beautiful to walk through. Other sections were starting to be overgrown with volunteer plants and needed some more active maintenance. A great community asset that is hopefully continued and cared for by large(r) section of residents. 

Q: If we wanted to harvest and serve some produce from this food forest (in order to contribute to the culinary possibilities of the site) who would we talk to, who would we serve? Is there a way to make the harvesting and (especially) the preparation, presentation and serving of the food into something?

SITE 3: Voedeselbos Eemvallei Zuid (30 Hectares)

“A unique combination of a food forest, herb-rich meadows and recreation Eemvallei Zuid is a joint initiative of the Food Forestry Foundation , the Buytenwold Foundation , the Vliervelden Nature Farm and the State Forestry Service within the framework of the New Nature programme of the province of Flevoland. In June 2017, they signed the agreement for the realisation of an innovative nature reserve (50 hectares) with a unique combination of a food forest (30 hectares), herb-rich meadows and various recreational opportunities for children and adults.” [link]

Field Notes: There were some innovative management plans on how potential buyers of the produce can pay to have access during the season, and then come harvest one or more kinds of produce. 

BONUS – SITE X: The Green Cathedral

At the end of our visit we had the chance to visit the artwork De Groene Kathedraal (1996) by Marinus Boezem. (Small side note: our studio originally learned about this artwork while browsing the bookshelves in Stavanger, Norway’s public library, where an entire book dedicated to Flevoland’s abundant and unique history of land art commisions. The power of libraries, printed books and serendipity offline! But, also the awesome work of Land Art Felvoland). There was some small controversy in the Netherlands in 2025 because MVRDV also proposed building an artwork / installation with the name Green Cathedral.

This project has been selected for a development contribution as part of the Open Call: Fresh Perspectives by the Creative Industries Fund NL 2025.