Bean
There
Festival
Workshops, lectures, tastings, parties, and experiments. In 2026, the Food Design Playground will be the home of a large, cheerful, and radically playful investigation: How can beans—the most underrated heroes of our food future—open our imagination and make us love them?
Tickets include lunch.
We start on March 22 with the Sexy Sprout Show.
Sexy Sprout show
For €42.50, you get a full day program and lunch included.
Yes, really. A full day of thinking, tasting, laughing, and discovering what can happen when you take a simple bean seriously.
Food Design Playground as Bean Brainwash playground
On March 22, a colorful mix of chefs, artists, farmers, writers, creators, and growers will come together to play with beans. And you can taste, play, and marvel along with them. Together, we will explore and celebrate everything that beans are (and could be).
Forget everything you think you know about beans!
This isn't lentil soup in a sad corner.
This is a vibrant, quirky day full of flavor, art, games, and lighthearted disruption.
What you can expect:
🥄 Horny hummus workshop – yes, it's exactly what you hope it is.
🍸 Bean cocktails with aquafaba foam and butterfly pea.
🌱 Sowing & permaculture workshop – get your hands in the soil and be amazed!
🎧 Audio tasting – listen while you eat.
🖼 Edible art & food design – beans as a question, statement, and snack.
🔮 The Oral Oracle – an installation in which your fate is determined by beans.
🫧 Brainwash Spa – a sensory lecture & tasting full of crunch and flavor
💃 Bean disco – because why shouldn't a chickpea be able to dance?
For whom?
For people who love food and ideas.
For those who like to experience something rather than just consume it.
For curious minds, open eyes, and slightly rebellious mouths.
For those who want a Sunday that feels very different from the standard brunch-with-a-latte.
You don't have to be a bean expert.
You don't even have to like beans.
You just need to have a little room to play in your head.
📍 Food Design Playground – in the heart of Dordrecht (15 minutes from Rotterdam)
🕥 10:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
🍲 Lunch included
🎟 Small-scale event, so limited number of tickets available
This is not a trade show.
Not a market.
Not a conventional food fair.
This is a Sexy Sprout Show.
And yes — you'll go home differently than you came. Buy your tickets quickly!
Been there, done that - SEXY SPROUTSHOW
Small-scale bean festival that will stimulate your senses and your mind. Workshops, lectures, tastings, parties, and experiments. Lunch included. Sunday, March 22 – Food Design Playground, Dordrecht
Check out part of the lineup for March 22 below.
Nadia Zerouali
Nadia Zerouali is a writer, presenter, and (TV) chef with a great love for Mediterranean and Arabic cuisine. She is known for her cookbooks, TV work, and culinary projects that bring together taste and culture.
Besara Workshop
An ode to simplicity: split peas, garlic, cumin, olive oil, water, time, and tranquility. In this workshop, you will discover how this Moroccan classic—nutritious, comforting, and powerful—is more than just soup: it is a shared bowl, a morning ritual, pure energy in its most modest form. image: Senna Hansen
The wild farmer
Horney Houmous Workshop. De Wilde Boerin (The Wild Farmer) is a platform for food, lust, and everything that stimulates your body and senses. The initiator is behavioral scientist and food pioneer Linette Mak. She contributes to sexual health through food. Come and make horney houmous during the workshop on March 22. Instagram: @dewildeboerin.
Sylvia Adventure
Silent Garden workshop. Sylvia Avontuur is a permaculture designer, Urban Gardening teacher, and lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility at an international business school in Amsterdam. She facilitates the Urban Permaculture Design Course (PDC) program for Cityplot and is Climate Mayor of Haarlem.
For Sylvia, a garden is not an end product, but a process. She works with creatives, knowledge carriers, and quiet voices to create gardens that are more than just beautiful—they are meaningful, educational, and political.
Merijn Tol
Merijn Tol is a culinary journalist, cookbook author, and cooks on location alone or with others at her supper club Cafe Mazahar. She writes about food as culture, as a story, and as a reflection of the times. With a keen eye for taste and context, she connects gastronomy to social and historical themes. She writes for Delicious magazine, among others, where she explores not only delicious recipes but also the deeper layers of dishes and food cultures. She also does this on her substack Cooking the Med. She also advises and develops menus for hospitality projects that are close to her heart.
Merijn is known for her accessible but substantive style: curious, precise, and always looking for what lies behind the plate and how we can use that to connect.
Jasper Udink ten Cate
Jasper Udink ten Cate is a creative chef and culinary concept developer. He is known for his playful, exploratory approach to food, combining gastronomy, design, and storytelling. During Bean there, you can admire his beautiful ceramic beans, listen to an interactive lecture about his taste museum, and join him on edible bean adventures.
Elisabeth Weerman
Elisabeth presents an interactive lecture with your feet in dried beans. A Brainwash - SPA. A bean spa where you get a delicious brainwash for your head and your mouth, using the techniques that the food industry applies to fast food!
Elisabeth Weerman is co-founder of The Nice Company, develops ice cream recipes, organizes meaningful gatherings, and writes about ultra-processed food. She is also one of the organizers of the festival.
Marije Vogelzang
Marije Vogelzang is one of the pioneers in the field of food design, the initiator of Food Design Playground, and one of the organizers of the festival. She has various food experiences in store for you. A real ORAL ORACLE—a surprisingly accurate oracle that reveals your fate using beans. You can also experience her audio tasting on a lounger, where you listen to your tongue talking to you and taste small bites from a pill box. She will give a lecture, and her National Tap Water Tasting is waiting for you!
Terri Salminen
Terri Salminen is a passionate culinary professional who works according to regenerative principles and uses food as a creative and exploratory medium. She moves between cooking, education, research, and storytelling, developing new ways to bring together knowledge, taste, and imagination. Terri is culinary artist in residence at Food Design Playground, where she works on projects such as the Perfume Pantry: a sensory food and fragrance collection that brings together ingredients, memory, and imagination.
Valerie Kuster
Valerie Kuster is the founder of Rotterdam's first rooftop restaurant Op Het Dak (2013-2021) and, as an entrepreneur and chef, has extensive experience in the culinary and hospitality world. She gives workshops, creates culinary programs, and cooks locally and seasonally. Learn all about tempeh made from native beans during her workshop on March 22.
Jennifer Berry
Jennifer Berry is a Los Angeles native who spent a decade crafting cocktails in some of Los Angeles’ most well-known bars. She has taken her passion for hospitality and tending bar to a more personal level with intimate workshops blending cocktail techniques with unique themes and ingredients.
Are you there?
Bean there (Done that) takes place four times a year:
March 22 - Sexy Sprout show
June 12-13-14 - Beans&Bloom
October 2-3-4 - Punk Peas Harvest
January 8-9-10, 2027 - Fart Fest
Been there, done that - SEXY SPROUTSHOW
Small-scale bean festival that will stimulate your senses and your mind. Workshops, lectures, tastings, parties, and experiments. Lunch included. Sunday, March 22 – Food Design Playground, Dordrecht
