Ipek and Robbe

It started as a small cute list on our phones: the little places we kept sending each other, and the weekends we spent tracking down the ones worth crossing a city for. So we made it a thing.

Turkish meze from her side, Belgian moules from his: that's where the name comes from. Meze, fittingly, goes back to a Persian word for taste.

Home, for us, is three places. Leuven, where we live. Oostende, where Robbe's parents live; we spent a summer walking the streets between their front door and the sea, with a camera and no plan. And Türkiye, where Ipek was born before she came to Belgium at eighteen. We don't visit any of them. We come home to them.

We love the slow parts most: a long table, a terrace where we lose track of time, an hour of sitting still while the light improves on its own. We photograph food, people and places as if we had just arrived, because that is the only way either of us notices anything, and then we write the story that goes with each one.

Along the way, strangers wander into the frame: a couple dancing on the Wapenplein on a Sunday morning, the fruit man working his queue at the Saturday market. We rarely learn their names. If you find yourself in one of our photographs, write to us and we will gladly send it to you. And if you would rather not be there, it comes down, no questions asked.