synthesis

3 Forks Lab’s activities are not confined to the kitchen. We invest heavily in basic research, and in building strong links with people and organisations involved in every facet of the food industry — all in search of a deep understanding of food in its natural and its cultural context.

We commit considerable time and resources in finding and analysing local ingredients. That means clocking up a lot of road miles. It also means maintaining an extensive network of local producers involved in agriculture, husbandry, wild game and fishery. Developed over the course of years, these relationships have themselves become an invaluable resource: first, they allow us to tap into a reservoir of empirically gained knowledge; second, direct access to producers gives us the ability to obtain products that are grown and handled according to our own specifications. Intimate knowledge of and personal involvement in the supply chain largely accounts for the originality and inimitability of our culinary concepts — they are literally built from the ground up.

Considerable time and resources also go into the meticulous documentation of ingredients, recipes and other types of practical culinary knowledge for which there exists no written record. This work is not done solely for its commercial applications. It is the way we actively contribute to the preservation of agro-diversity, biodiversity, and cultural tradition.