Welcome to Bento Kitchen! Bento Kitchen is a project by Met Hamer en Vork, to make people happy around lunchtime.

Apart from Bento Kitchen, Met Hamer en Vork caters cosy lunches, festive dinners and food events run by Veronica Hamer. With a background in Art History, many years ago I started as an assistant helping produce exhibitions. While I was busy checking the state of frames, I slowly came to the realization that I cared even more about providing daily lunches for the team than the actual paintings. I discovered that cooking food is a great way to use my creativity and to make people happy. Soon I began to organize dinner parties. They grew in size and turned out to be a great success; guests left smiling and asking for the next one to come.

In 2016, I started my own catering company. Met Hamer en Vork has organized countless private dinners and catered for various food events. For small events I work solo, and for bigger ones I team up with befriended freelance cooks. Memorable dishes, balanced flavours and beautiful plates are the common factors.

From 2017 to 2020, I worked as a lunch chef for a young tech company in Amsterdam, MessageBird. It started off with about 50 mouths to feed, but the company grew quickly and soon over 300 employees were looking forward to my dishes. During this time my interest in healthy eating grew, striving for the right balance of micro and macro nutrients in every meal. To optimize my knowledge in this area, I’m now training in dietetics. Fall 2020 meant the start of Bento Kitchen, to bring joy around lunchtime for all the people working from home.

I always look forward to helping others with food-related questions or planning needs. Feel free to contact me with any questions or to discuss your plans, and I’ll share some ideas and possibilities with you.