Around the Table with Luisa Weiss

Featuring a one-paragraph recipe for a simple pasta dish that tastes like home

This week, we spoke with Luisa Weiss—cookbook author, OG internet food writer, mother, wife, & American expat living in Berlin. Luisa’s got a wonderful way with words, which you’ll get to experience below. Whether she’s talking about grocery shopping in Berlin, making homemade gingerbread houses with her son and his friends, or the latest books she’s read, she wraps you in and holds you tight.

We hope you like this interview as much as we do.

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A little bit about Luisa

Luisa Weiss is a master of words, crafter of stories, and beautiful recipe developer and writer. You might know her from The Wednesday Chef, and more recently, her wonderful cookbooks—Classic German Baking and Classic German Cooking.

Tell us about yourself! Where are you from originally, and how did you find your way to another country?
I’m half American, half Italian, but was born in Berlin. I grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, where my father and I lived for my elementary school years, and in Berlin, where my mother lives and where I went to middle and high school. I went to college in the U.S. and lived in New York for a decade before moving back to Berlin 15 years ago. I also spent a post-graduate year in Paris working at a publishing company. Identity and home have always been really loaded terms for me, but Berlin does feel very much like home and I am most comfortable with my mish-mashed identity here.

Cooking & food:

What do you typically eat for breakfast?
I alternate between a handful of different breakfasts. Filter coffee with milk, always. After that, I love a nice piece of toast with butter and Seville orange marmalade, or a bowl of plain yogurt with savory granola, chopped cucumbers and cherry tomatoes and some flaky salt on top. But I also like toast topped with cottage cheese and sliced tomatoes. Every once in a blue moon, I go through an oatmeal phase: Rolled oats, water, plenty of salt, then once cooked, I add a little drizzle of maple syrup and a generous scattering of chopped toasted pecans or walnuts.

What’s the one kitchen utensil or tool you can’t live without?
A good knife.

What did your kids’ school serve for lunch today, or what did you pack them?
My younger son eats the cafeteria lunch, my older one refuses to. We pack them German Pausenbrote (whole grain rye bread spread with butter or cream cheese and then ham or salami or cheddar cheese), plus pretzels or crackers and some dried fruit. My older son gets a protein granola bar too (the younger one isn’t allowed, because there’s a nut allergy in his class, but also: he eats the school lunch). I went through a phase of making more elaborate lunches for the older one, but they often came home uneaten. So we largely stick to this extremely uninspiring plan. My husband, in particular, is appalled that the older one eats so little (and no hot meal at lunch!) but I am trying to get him to lighten up. ;)

What’s the most surprising thing about grocery shopping in Germany?
When I first moved back, I had a very hard time adjusting to the slim variety of fresh vegetables and having to make lots of special trips to different grocery stores to get everything (almost) that I wanted. Over time, I’ve gotten used to it so it no longer surprises me. I like that seasonality plays a bigger role here—Germany doesn’t have a California or a Florida that can provide good-quality fruit and vegetables all year long, so you have to get better about really celebrating the food that is in season and available. (Katie: I love reframing this as a chance to celebrate the food that’s in season—produce is also very seasonal in southern Spain, and I’ve come to embrace that, too.) And I’ve grown to love all the little shops and grocers in my neighborhood that I have to trundle to to get everything I need.

What’s a food you’ve come to love that you’d never tried before moving to Germany?
Poached Maultaschen (Swabian dumplings) served in beef broth with vinegary lukewarm potato salad—there’s a great Swabian prepared food stand at my local greenmarket that serves this dish and it was such a revelation to me when I first had it. This is a standard meal in Swabia, but not so much in Berlin! (Recipes for all three are in my latest cookbook, Classic German Cooking.)

What’s your go-to meal when you don’t have time to cook?
My local BioCompany sells these jars of fermented cabbage called Kraut & Rüben and we almost always have a jar of it in our fridge. When I don’t have time to cook, I make myself a sandwich, usually with cheddar cheese, and some of the fermented cabbage. It’s sour and crunchy, really satisfying, and so healthy!

If you had to describe your cooking style in three words, what would they be?
Simple, seasonal, mostly vegetables. (Ok four words)

What’s one “kitchen hack” you’ve learned since becoming a mom?
If you cut up a bunch of raw vegetables (cucumbers, kohlrabi, carrots, peppers) and put them out on a plate while dinner is being prepared, they will vanish before you’re even finished cooking. Not so for the same vegetables, cooked and served at dinner.

What’s one food that you miss from the U.S. that you can’t find or recreate?
Chipotle burrito bowls! Unparalleled. (Also double-acting baking powder.) (Meredith: What I would give for a Chipotle burrito bowl!)

What’s your favorite place to go out to eat in Berlin?
I don’t have a favorite; I love going out and discovering new places. But I will say that I always have my birthday lunch on the 6th floor of Kadewe, which is a fun treat I look forward to all year.

We obviously are obsessed with recipes and cooking, and we can't help but ask: What's your favorite recipe? The one that tastes like home, reminds you of something from your childhood, or just something you simply love making?
This is a tough one, because I have a lot of different favorite recipes, including lots of Asian recipes that I adore from Fuchsia Dunlop and Hetty McKinnon. If I'm completely truthful, spaghetti with simple tomato sauce, while so prosaic, is the most steadying. It reminds me of childhood, of Italy, it makes my children happy, it's easy to rustle up with both eyes closed. I cook a slivered onion in a generous amount of olive oil over medium heat until it's soft and slippery and sort of golden, then I add canned tomatoes and salt. I simmer, covered, until the pasta is cooked—usually about 20 minutes or so. You can add basil if you like, I do in the summer. Then dress the pasta and top with grated parmesan. (Katie: Absolutely beautiful, Luisa. You’ve managed to sum up exactly why I love recipes in one stunning paragraph. And of course, now I need a bowl of pasta.)

Family & community:

What’s a local food custom or tradition that you’ve adopted into your own routine?
Abendbrot! Whenever I’m feeling particularly uninspired to cook, Abendbrot comes to the rescue. We buy a nice loaf of bread and set out slices with good butter, all the cheese and charcuterie in our fridge, plus cut up raw veg to crunch on (or more of that fermented cabbage).

What’s your go-to meal or dish for hosting friends and family?
It’s hard to beat homemade lasagne.

What’s the best food-related memory your family has made since moving to Germany?
The time that I made five gingerbread houses from scratch for my son and his four friends to decorate one month before delivering my second son is a memory I’ll have forever (and one that I will never, ever repeat). But I think my kids would probably say going to the green market with us on weekends and having a snack while we shop and browse the stands is their favorite food-related activity. (My older son loves the Fischbrötchen that the smoked fish seller sells and my younger son always asks for a Thai chicken drumstick from the Thai cart.)

How have you built a village where you are?
As an introvert, it’s not easy to move to a place where you know no one and have to start from scratch. It took me at least a year of feeling very lonely and somewhat lost before I started feeling brave enough to make friends. Now, 15 years later, I feel so lucky to have the most amazing community of friends, most of whom are in some sort of intercultural marriage or have a multicultural background, so we really get each other. You’re never too old to make new friends, to reach out and ask for someone’s phone number, to set up a hang and get to know someone who you think you’ll click with. I think it’s particularly important to create community in the dark and cold winter months, when living in Berlin can feel really bleak and seeing friends can feel almost holy!

Just for fun:

What's something that's sparked joy in your life recently?
One of my best pals and I recently spent a week in Trieste together. January and February are usually really bleak in Berlin, and I struggle with SAD. Getting away that week was like a shot in the arm. Five days of unadulterated time with Joe, plenty of sunshine and laughter, the sparkle of the Adriatic in the corner of my eye, and a nice hotel room to collapse into every night brought me a lot of joy. As did going home to my family!

What are you loving reading to/ listening to / watching right now?
I just tore through Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte. It’s definitely NSFW, but it’s also hilarious and such a skewering look at life right now. I’m really enjoying The Dip’s Love Direction album at the moment. My husband and I recently finished the second season of Bad Sisters. I didn’t love most of the season, but the finale was amazing and redeemed the other episodes. I miss those ladies already.

Where else can we find you on the internet?
You can find me on Substack at Letter from Berlin or on Instagram at @wednesdaychef.

If you could only eat one cuisine or food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
If it was just one cuisine, I’d choose Chinese. If it was just one food? Tomatoes! They are my favorite food, and I will eat them in literally every way possible.