After more than three years, the work of countless devoted creators and the ideas of the entire SALT team have come together in our book Salt – Contemporary Hungarian Peasant Kitchen with Roots in Szatmár.
This book serves as an album: we strived to collect everything that has defined the restaurant’s operation, manifesto and identity from the very beginning.
Every road leads to Szatmár
While the book contains 43 recipes, it’s not a traditional cookbook. We wanted to share our broader thoughts on food, ingredients and the Hungarian kitchen. The order of dishes follows the restaurant experience, inviting the reader to participate as our food-based storytelling unfolds.
The book focuses on our roots in the Szatmár region. For us, these flavors and techniques are more than just inspiration; they are the foundation of our kitchen. We’ve included historical and cultural context alongside the recipes to show the depth of this relationship.
A visual unit
Creating unity of content and form was increasingly important to us. The physical appearance and weight of the book carry as much meaning as the text. To achieve a unique visual coherence, designers Zalán Péter Salát and Dávid Bíró used one-of-a-kind solutions.
Actual soil from Szatmár – grains from the swamp of Ecsed – got worked into the cover representing the cultural environment our dishes are from. The same care and thoughtfulness was applied to the typography. The custom font was inspired by the historic inscriptions from the Calvinist Church of Csaroda and the boat-shaped grave markers of Szatmárcseke.
Something for all senses
We moved away from classic food photography to focus on nature, ingredients and textures, since these aspects are also what we always keep in mind when preparing our dishes. The use of hand-made paper further emphasises our of creating a book that speaks to all senses.
To document our journey and to show our approach towards contemporary Hungarian kitchen and the foundations on which we base everything we do, the book includes an introduction of György Dragomán, and encyclopedic summaries by Noémi Saly, Zsófi Mautner, Róza Szilágyi and Katalin Katkó..
For you, for them and for us
In a restaurant, many things are temporary: the menu changes with the seasons and the kitchen team evolves. This book preserves our gathered knowledge and our vision for future generations of culinary enthusiasts and professionals. It serves as a permanent summary we can refer to at any time.
