KLE refines its autumn menu with foraged berries and handmade plates

Kitchen, larder, and exchange of ideas: at KLE in Vienna, the seasons shift not by calendar alone but by what arrives in the kitchen and what the team has preserved. This autumn brings homemade pickled sea buckthorn in jars lined with pale brine, its bright berries suspended like jewels. The berries came in at their peak, caught at the moment when preservation becomes part of the dish rather than its footnote.

With the cooler months come new drinks: quinces are being baked slowly until their flesh softens and darkens, coaxing out the fruit’s honeyed depth. That same preservation logic extends to the kitchen’s final course. Plums have been baked, boiled, dried and worked into jam for a new Plum Knödel, a dessert that builds layers of texture from a single fruit through different techniques and temperatures.

The dining room itself has acquired new vessels from Where Shadows Fall, a ceramicist whose hand lies visible in each plate’s uneven glaze and weight. Commissioned specifically for KLE’s service, these pieces shift how the food lands on the table, their surfaces catching light differently than industrial china.

Beyond the plate, KLE has also begun publishing, with new books now available to order through its website. The kitchen’s thinking finds its way into print, part of a broader philosophy that sees cooking, writing and friendship as part of the same work. The restaurant’s daily ritual before service says as much: staff gather to move, to encourage one another, to prepare not just food but themselves.

Imagery courtesy of KLE (@klerestaurant).