A restaurant that tries to
carry its weight.
A plant-based tasting menu in Baixa, Porto. We work directly with the people who grow the food. The menu follows them.
The restaurant industry is extractive by default. It pulls hard on people, on land, on supply chains, and most of that cost sits outside the P&L.
Three of us opened VENN in 2023, on the back of a meal-kit business. None of us had run a restaurant before.
We wanted to build a place that could survive financially while taking more responsibility for people, land, sourcing, and waste.
The decisions since have been concrete. Chocolate and cashew came off the purchasing list in the first two years, over the labour conditions documented in both supply chains; the chocolate on the menu since is THIC, made from oat okara and cacao husk. Heritage grains and wild species went on. Since December 2024 there has been one tasting menu and nothing else.
The restaurant, the farms, the patio, and the public work are connected.
Up to two menus per season. The scale keeps the sourcing traceable and the relationships direct.
The Restaurant
Tasting menu only since December 2024. The menu changes once or twice a season, with a weekly supplement and optional pairing. A short-window ingredient sometimes splits the season.
Sourcing
Over 70% of what we spend on ingredients goes to sources we can name: farms, producers and foraging. The rest comes from importers, shops and markets. The provenance page shows the split, updated as invoices come in.
Key farms and producers include Formiga Gloriosa in Muro, Trofa (regenerative, foraged), Sweet Green (borage, dandelion, basil, fava), H2Douro, and Corotos Living Lab. Alongside partners such as LandraTech (acorn flour) and Associação Verde (montado stewardship).
The Kitchen
Monika's approach is whole-plant. We find a second use for as much of each vegetable as we can. What doesn't fit one dish finds another.
Fermentation and preservation carry flavour across seasons and push it into places it would not otherwise reach: koji, vinegars, lacto-ferments, preserved citrus, house marmite, old bread, broths, and oils. The cooking is sometimes experimental, willing to put things next to each other that are not supposed to meet.
PATIO
Behind the restaurant there is a 46m² courtyard. About a third of its concrete came up between October and early November 2025, starting at a workshop with Landra (Sara Rodrigues and Rodrigo Camacho). By September 2026 the opened ground had grown over with apple mint and self-seeded brassicas, and that corner is noticeably cooler. The rest is still concrete.
A glazing project is underway. The intention is for the courtyard to be open to anyone, not just to diners.
EAT.BITZ
At dinner, each guest receives an oracle card tied to one ingredient on the current menu. The card traces it back to the farm, the species, and the ecology it sits inside.
A kaleidoscope viewer at the table reveals around 200 species documented across the farms and forager sites that supply VENN. The card can be taken home.
Developed with Genomic Gastronomy, Bernat Cuni (Cunicode), and Ruben Gres through ST3ER. Live at VENN now.
Mesa Aberta & VERDE
Mesa Aberta is a free-meal programme for people outside the restaurant's usual reach. Reshaped after a 2025 pilot.
VERDE is a revenue-share partnership with Associação Verde. While acorn is on the menu, 3% of the tasting menu price goes to montado stewardship.
The cooking is seasonal and whole-plant where it makes sense, but not dogmatic. Nothing is added to compensate for the absence of meat. Broths, ferments, smoke, acidity, fat, texture, and time.
The menu changes with what the farms are producing. Spring, summer, autumn, winter — sometimes split early and late when a short window is worth catching. Tasting menu only, which lets the kitchen commit fully to one direction at a time.
The people and organisations this work depends on.
University of Porto Technology and Science Park. Porto.
Social impact incubator. Lisbon.
Three years. Still in progress.
VENN Canteen opens in Porto's Baixa, built on the foundations of VENN Foods, the meal-kit delivery business the company started with in 2020. None of the three founders had run a restaurant before.
100% plant-based from the start. Sourcing-led from the start.
Experimental years. The purchasing policy sharpens: chocolate and cashew were dropped, local heritage grains and vegetables introduced, spontaneous and wild species brought into the kitchen.
Sea Shepherd, January 2024: a month-long collaboration for Veganuary, with a share of proceeds donated.
December 2024: Shift to tasting menu only.
Eyes on the Field, May 2025: a field workshop at Formiga Gloriosa, then a multi-sensory dinner at VENN a few days later.
Verde revenue-share partnership begins.
EAT.BITZ enters development with Genomic Gastronomy, Bernat Cuni, and Ruben Gres.
Landra joins on patio ecological redesign.
March 2026: ST3ER project concludes. EAT.BITZ fully installed at VENN and live in-restaurant.
Patio courtyard works and rear-facade in progress. Ongoing.
Independently founded by three people.
Leads the kitchen. Before VENN she cooked at Época, in Porto, and ran Supa Zupas, a soup kitchen project with Paula Lopes at Hotelier on Rua de Anselmo Braamcamp. Menu development and the restaurant's culinary identity are her work.
Sets VENN's direction and strategy, and decides which producers we buy from. Also responsible for day-to-day operations, partnerships and institutional relationships.
In charge of analytics.