I. Our Story
A small kitchen, opened in a back-house in 2019.
Mira Ahlbeck, on what makes a thirty-six-seat dining room work.
We opened on a Tuesday in November, with a single five-course tasting and no reservations system. The first night, we had nine guests. By the third Saturday we had forty-two, mostly neighbours, mostly suspicious of the price.
Seven years later, the menu is still five courses, the room still seats thirty-six, and the price has gone up only twice — both times by a hand-written letter to every regular, with the reason.
What we cook is not avant-garde. It is what we'd want to eat on a quiet weekday night when we are tired but want to feel cared for. A starter that wakes you up. A main that holds the table together. A dessert that ends the conversation gently.
The room is a back-house behind a Schanze courtyard. You walk past the bicycle racks, through a small lit hallway, and a velvet curtain announces you into a space that, on a good night, feels like a friend's living room. That is the only review we ask for.
— Mira & Tomas, Aurora Bistro, Hamburg.
