Sarma für Alle

Sarma für Alle
A workshop on food culture, memory, and identity

Hey everyone,

I'm Deniz, moved to Hamburg 2,5 years ago. I built my practice from scratch. It's called Ara Mekân. I know from experience that moving across borders, finding your flow, and building a community can be really challenging. But sometimes, all it takes to feel at home is a warm kitchen, a shared table, and the comforting ritual of preparing food together. Let's turn over a new leaf, literally and figuratively.

"Sarma für Alle" is a hands-on cooking workshop that treats a stuffed vine leaf as a way into much larger questions: how communities carry knowledge of land, food, and belonging across generations, and how that same knowledge can help us feel at home somewhere new.

Across the world, communities have kept a living record of how to work with land: what to grow, when to harvest, how to prepare food in ways that honor both the ecosystem and the body. This knowledge survives in saved seeds, in recipes passed by hand, in the seasonal rhythms of a kitchen. It also survives displacement, traveling with people, adapting to new pantries, and staying a thread back to where it came from.

Sarma itself carries that history. Its roots reach into ancient Mesopotamia and the Eastern Mediterranean, and it found its most refined form in the Ottoman palace kitchens, where the practice of wrapping rice or bulgur in vine leaves was perfected. From there it traveled across the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, shaped along the way by each region's own herbs, spices, and occasions for celebration. What was cooked at countless weddings, holidays, and ordinary weeknight tables became a shared inheritance across borders.

We will be working from my grandmother Sabiha's recipe, who was born in Kilis, a small city on the Türkiye-Syria border. We will sit together, roll leaves with our hands, and share our stories. What flavors, herbs, or food memories do you carry from your own childhood or culture? Bring your stories to the table, and let's blend them into a shared experience.

No cooking experience is needed. What matters is showing up.

Sarma für Alle: A Trilingual Cooking Workshop

Host: Dr. phil. Deniz Küçüker, Psychologist

Languages: Turkish, English, German

Sliding scale fee: 45, 60, 75 €

Date & Time: 12 September 2026, 14:00 to 18:00

Location: Rutschbahn 8, Rotherbaum, 20146 Hamburg

Capacity: Only 9 spots!