Happy Monday, everyone! We hope you had a great weekend. 

Today we’d like to share a little interview we did with Florian, the organizer of the awesome Maltby St. Market Lock-In event, which is happening soon in London. Florian runs the successful Foodtri.ps Foodcamps and Porkcamps, where he brings people together around food. Read more to learn all about Florian, his Foodcamps and his love for celeriac…

Tell us a bit about your background, and how you came to be such a “foodie” (excuse the term)…
I grew up in the industrial parts of West Germany in the late seventies. This was probably the worst period for food anywhere, ever. I fondly remember technicolor ice creams and cheap fries, but that’s about it. Food started to balance out my office jobs in my early twenties: Making gnocchi is the perfect antidote to staring at a screen. When I lived in Berlin the whole city seemed to wake from a cold-war-related food slumber, and this is when I got properly excited about eating and cooking.

When did you start Foodtri.ps & what motivated you to begin organizing your Foodcamps & Porkcamps?
There is a butcher in Berlin that started to put whole animals on its counters, and they are also big on arcane offal and traditional preparations like brawn. This was big news in the early noughts in Berlin. I was taken aback and fascinated at the same time. When Matt Webb talked about investing a hundred hours into something you love at the Reboot09 conference in Copenhagen, I was immediately drawn to the idea of bringing together BarCamps and food. I started Porkcamp, a barcamp for butchery, meat processing and cookery and got tremendous support. Half a year later I was at a German farm at minus 15 degrees with 50 people, and the first pig was killed. A humbling, touching experience. I then extended the events to trips to interesting culinary regions, covering Italy, the UK and, for the first time this year, Morocco. It’s wonderful. What’s best: I’m now part of the same presentation that inspired me a few years back, as an example. It’s really come full circle.

What do you do when you’re not organizing foodie events?
I run a software development company called mindmatters in London. We work as a tech incubator-for-hire for startups. It’s an exciting time in an exciting city. However, most people at startups eat horribly badly. A lot of work for me there on both fronts, then.

What was your inspiration to organize the Maltby St. Market Lock-In? What are some highlights from your event that you’d like to share - what can people expect?
Maltby St. is my favourite food market in London right now. The traders there sell out of their production and storage facilities on Saturday, so it’s as close to the produce as you are likely to get anywhere. And it’s a bit decentralised: A long stretch of railway arches between council estates and old warehouses, so it lends itself to discovery. Rachel McCormack, who is a regular on BBC Radio 4’s Kitchen Cabinet food show, will introduce people to the traders there with me, and we’ll discover some of the greatest bites that you can have in London right now together. And there is a kitchen right in the middle of the market for us to cook with the produce together. This will be quite unique.

How did you find out about Gidsy?
Gidsy found out about me! Edial got in touch one day through Twitter, we met up for a Young Turks Dinner and it’s been love ever since.

What is your favourite thing to cook? What about to eat?
It’s really quite humble, but I love the versatility of celeriac. Raw, steamed, mashed, in stocks and sauces, celeriac has such an earthy, soothing quality, I can’t get enough of it. My wife always tells me that she associates the smell of celeriac with me, so there.

As it’s the season, I really enjoy eating purple sprouting broccoli right now. The fresh nuttiness combined with a soft boiled egg: Unbeatable.

What are some food rules you try and live by?
I try to only eat meat that I trust to have been raised with respect for the animal. Organic is an okay minimum standard for that, but if I know the producers and the way they operate? Even better. This is not purely altruistic: The meat quality is just so much better. Also I try and get what’s good at the best price. Surprisingly, this does not mean going to the supermarket and shopping for bargains, but going to farmers markets and buying my veg there. A lot cheaper, and a lot better.

How long have you lived in London? What’s your favourite thing about the city?
I only moved to London in December 2011 so it hasn’t been long at all. I love how well connected the food scene is via Twitter, how many wonderful opportunities there are to meet likeminded people and how many restaurants there are to take them to. I’m going to Jeremy Lee’s Quo Vadis in Soho soon! Exciting!

Last question (a bit off topic): What are you reading right now?
The novel I’m reading right now is a bit of a letdown, so I’ll tell you about the book I open up almost daily instead: Harold McGee’s “On Food And Cooking”. The most comprehensive book ever written on the subject and wonderfully geeky too. 

Thanks for the great interview, Florian! We hope to see more of your events up on Gidsy soon!