How did this place come about and what made it different from the start?
We met as chefs at Moro in London, although both of us were relatively late bloomers in the profession. Two years apart, one from Vienna and one from Warsaw, we had each independently written to the authors of our favourite cookbook to ask whether they might have a job for us.
After meeting and falling in love, we quickly realised that there was a common thread in the ingredients and flavours we remembered from our grandmothers’ cooking. We held our first pop-up in London in November 2019 and called it Centrala, after the old central market halls in Poland. The name was also meant to evoke a broader Central and Eastern European feeling.
Soon afterwards, we moved to Vienna and used our rather large apartment to host a series of supper clubs at home. After a few years of searching, we finally found the space we had been looking for.
From the beginning, the idea was never to reproduce traditional dishes exactly or define the food too rigidly through national borders. We wanted to work with the ingredients, memories and cooking traditions we had grown up with, using the experience and curiosity we had gained in professional kitchens.
What part of the day, space, or creative process do those who work here enjoy the most?
We change parts of the menu almost every day, so there is a constant process of thinking, discussing, cooking and adjusting. Then comes the preparation, the setting of the tables and the gradual transformation of the restaurant before service.
Finally, people arrive and you see them enjoying something that first existed only as an idea and was then made by your own hands. That feeling is still difficult to describe.
If someone is coming in for the first time, what should they not miss?
They should try to enjoy the place as a whole: the movement of the room, the pace of the evening and the way the experience develops over time. And, of course, they should explore the menu and the drinks.
We would rather people did not come looking for one single signature dish. The restaurant makes the most sense when you settle in, share a few things and allow us to look after you.
What has been an interesting challenge that has made you rethink something about the project?
One of the most important things we have learned is that hospitality and warmth are everything in this line of work.
Running a restaurant comes with many different challenges and competing priorities, but we are hosts before we are cooks or businesspeople. A good and successful restaurant has to live by that. The food can be excellent, but people also need to feel genuinely welcome and cared for.
What influence, idea, or reference continues to shape the way you work today?
A guiding principle we try to live by is generosity. A large part of hospitality is being generous, or, more simply, not being stingy.
That generosity can be expressed through portions and ingredients, but also through attention, time and the way people are treated. We want guests to feel that the restaurant is giving something to them, rather than constantly calculating what can be withheld.
What place, project, or person has inspired you recently and why?
There are many restaurants and cookbook authors who continue to inspire us. On a recent trip to Catalonia, we visited Villa Mas in Sant Feliu de Guíxols. It was a dream of a restaurant in almost every regard.
The food was simple and delicious, the hospitality was warm and natural, the surroundings were almost too beautiful, and the wine list was mind-blowing. It was a reminder that a restaurant does not need to be complicated to feel completely special.
If your space could invite someone to collaborate for a day, who would it be and what would you do together?
We would cook with Patience Gray on an island in Greece, with limited electricity but an abundance of ingredients.
We would gather what was available, cook over fire and make the day revolve around the landscape rather than a fixed plan. It would probably be life-changing.
Is there an object, corner, or detail of the place that has a story that few people know?
On top of our bar is a row of unusual bottles covered in colourful woven plastic wire. They come in different shapes, and each one is completely unique.
They are Hungarian miners’ bottles. They are both humble and incredibly beautiful, and they have gradually become a quiet but important part of the room.
If this project were a city, a book, or a record, which would it be and why?
At times, running the restaurant feels very much like War and Peace.
But as a place, we would like to think of it as mostly Vienna, with a good part of Warsaw mixed in and a few generous pinches of London on top. Those three cities represent where we are, where we come from and where we learned how we wanted to cook and run a restaurant.
Answers by Ola Szwarc & Nadim Amin, Chefs and Proprietors, Rosebar Centrala
