You want to know the cure for a positive mind? I’ll tell you. It’s not in a bottle of supplements, a mindfulness app, or some overpriced morning routine. It’s in your kitchen. It’s in your hands. It’s cooking.

The light shifts first. One morning in the city i live in, the sun no longer bounces off the stones of the square the way it did in August; it slides, low and warm, into the streets. The market tells the same story: berries fading, pumpkins and wild mushrooms creeping in, a butcher quietly hanging wild duck at the back. This is the Belgium I’ve grown to love over the past twenty-five years — layered, generous, never just one cuisine.

It’s our own unapologetic kitchen-lab disguised as a magazine. A place for food lovers, home cooks, influencers with flour on their phones, anyone who cares about taste and aesthetics in equal measure. Spring 2026 will be our first issue. It won’t be sterile. It won’t be safe. It will be vibrant, honest, bold.

Yesterday was about first impressions. Today is about honesty.

Every studio needs a space where ideas can take on their own life. For KooK Studioo, that space is Nomoro. Label — our publishing imprint, our seal of experimentation, and our way of giving recipes and stories a new identity.

For decades, recipes have looked the same.A list of ingredients. A numbered set of instructions. A glossy photo of something no one’s plate has ever truly resembled.

Koken lijkt op het eerste gezicht veilig en huiselijk. Een pot op het vuur, een recept volgen, en klaar. Maar wie beter kijkt, ziet dat de keuken altijd een plek van rebellie is geweest. Niet alleen tegen honger of armoede, maar ook tegen regels, tradities en systemen.

Food magazines. You see them on the shelves: glossy pages, perfectly styled dishes, headlines screaming that you need to make this now. Everything looks effortless. But anyone who has ever worked with editorial teams knows that behind that polished cover lies a world that is anything but simple. It’s a mix of passion, stress, deadlines, chaos, and creativity – and it’s precisely that tension that drives them.

We came across an old recipe from 1976: Timbits. You know, those little donut holes that became especially popular in Canada. Back then, they were seen as the perfect way to use up leftover donut dough – just roll the scraps into balls and fry them. Simple, small, sweet.

We often underestimate just how powerful a menu really is. It seems like a simple document: dishes, prices, done. But in reality, it might be the most read piece of text in your entire business. Everyone who walks in grabs that menu. Everyone who comes to eat studies it. So you have two choices: either let people stare at a dry list, or turn that menu into a tool that pulls them in, excites them, and sets the tone before the first bite.

Everything starts somewhere. For us, it began in the 1970s.An era when buffets in Limburg were still something truly special. Long tables, loaded with cold dishes, decorated as if they were works of art. Think stuffed eggs, shrimp-stuffed tomatoes, ham rolls with asparagus, and of course, the Belle Vue salmon – the crown jewel of the buffet.

Food is not makeup. It’s not lipstick smeared over cracked lips, not foundation covering flaws and cracks. Food doesn’t need camouflage. It doesn’t want to be filtered, polished, or glossed over. Food wants to be real. Tangible. Seen and tasted as it truly is.