Best known abroad for its herring, deep-fried croquettes and sickly sweet stroopwafels, it is fair to say the Netherlands has not historically been world-renowned for its cuisine.
Yet for the first time, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Amsterdam has been voted the world’s best on TripAdvisor, further proof the food scene in the country is on the rise, its head chef said.
With the exception of Irish oysters and Japanese wagyu, everything on the menu at the Bougainville restaurant is local Dutch produce, chef Tim Golsteijn said in his bustling kitchen just off Amsterdam’s main square.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Dutch gastronomy has really been growing in the past 10 years, also because Amsterdam is becoming more and more of a big international city,” said the 36-year-old, who was born and raised in the capital and describes himself as “100 percent Dutchie.”
“You can’t compare it to London or New York or Tokyo, but we are getting there,” he said, as his sous chefs chopped, sliced and stirred ready for another busy dinner service.
In 1958, there were only eight Michelin-starred restaurants in the whole country, but now the Netherlands has forced its way into the world’s top 10, with 123 restaurants boasting a coveted star.
Golsteijn uses North Sea fish, local lobster and Dutch lamb, but also draws on culinary inspiration from around the world — reflecting the Dutch people’s history as seafarers and colonizers.
“From ages ago, we were travelers ... we came back with spices, with coffee, with chocolate. We took that into our food culture,” he said.
However, he is also taking down-to-earth Dutch staples and elevating them to Michelin-star level.
For example, the restaurant serves kibbeling, a humble, deep-fried fish bite snack found in beach cafes around the country, but with sea bass instead of the usual cod belly.
Dutch food has an undeserved reputation, said Isabelle Nelis, who runs culinary tours around Amsterdam.
“Most people think about heavy dishes like pea soup, or the dishes that we do in winter with the mashed potato, cabbage, sausage, but there is so much more,” she said.
It is not just food. Land reclaimed from the sea in the Netherlands contains excellent minerals for wine-producing grapes and there is even a burgeoning champagne industry, Nelis said.
The food scene has changed greatly over the years and is now “alive and buzzing,” she said, helped by the cosmopolitan nature of melting-pot Amsterdam.
Restaurants are serving about 180 different types of cuisine in Amsterdam, she said, adding: “You can eat in every nationality” in the world.
Eric Toner, the owner of the Bougainville, said the quality of the Dutch food scene had changed beyond recognition in the past few decades.
“When I was young, decades ago, it was maybe one or two restaurants with a star in Amsterdam. Maybe six or 10 in the whole of the Netherlands. Now we have 24 or 26 in Amsterdam alone,” he said.
As a child growing up in the Netherlands, “we ate a lot of meatballs, potatoes, vegetables and a lot of gravy over it. That was a normal dinner.”
Yet the next generation has much more refined tastes, helped by a greater choice of cuisines from around the world, he said.
“We have gone from a normal small country when everyone eats a big potato pan on the table ... to an international food culture,” he said.
The award made headlines around the Netherlands, but Toner and Golsteijn acknowledge that the TripAdvisor award, based on customer reviews rather than professional critics, does not catapult their restaurant to the highest echelons of global gastronomy.
For Toner, it is all about meeting customer expectations.
“I was completely flabbergasted. It’s an honor to win every prize,” he said. “But I know also the downside of it. Expectations go up and when I say: ‘What is the best restaurant in the world?’ I would not say my restaurant, I would say a three-star restaurant.”
The restaurant, within a hotel overlooking the Dam Square in Amsterdam, offers a five-course menu priced at 130 euros (US$140).
For Nelis, the Dutch should take more pride in their produce.
“We tend to complain a lot. We complain when it’s raining. When it’s nice weather, we say it’s too hot, and that’s the same with the food,” she said. “We don’t pat ourselves on the back enough.”
FOPLP PLANS? The chipmaker said the budget was for fab construction and manufacturing facilities, but did not comment on reports of talks with Innolux Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) board of directors yesterday approved capital appropriations of US$29.62 billion to install and upgrade the firm’s chip manufacturing process technologies, as well as its advanced and mature packaging technology capacity. The capital expenditure budget would also be for fab construction and installation of manufacturing facilities, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker said in a statement. TSMC did not comment on reports that it was in talks with flat-panel display maker Innolux Corp (群創) to acquire an idle plant as it prepares to convert manufacturing equipment into a new chip packaging production line that is to use fan-out
A boom: The airlines saw a rise in international flights and demand for cargo services, with the latter attributed to AI needs and vendors opting to have items delivered by air China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) have reported their highest-ever net profit for the first half of the year amid a boom in international travel and growing demand for cargo services. The global airline industry’s momentum from last year extended into the first six months of this year. That momentum along with an increase in the number of flights supported passenger revenue growth, the two airlines said on Friday. CAL’s net profit in the first six months of this year hit a new high of NT$7.14 billion (US$220 million), resulting in earnings per share of NT$1.08, the airline
The world’s biggest steel producer sounded the alarm about a crisis in China that carries the potential to send global shock waves, warning of a deeper industry downturn than major events in 2008 and 2015. Conditions in China are like a “harsh winter” that would be “longer, colder and more difficult to endure than we expected,” China Baowu Steel Group Corp (寶武鋼鐵集團) chairman Hu Wangming (胡望明) told staff at the company’s half-year meeting. For commodities including steel, the warning from Baowu underscores risks to demand and prices, as well as what ArcelorMittal SA, the No. 2 firm in the industry, called an
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: Domestic chip gear output is forecast to be higher than last year’s NT$149.7bn as strong demand for AI and HPC technologies continues The production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor equipment is likely to grow this year after falling 7.3 percent last year amid strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. The ministry made the comment last week after reporting that the production value of Taiwan-made semiconductor equipment for the first five months of this year rose by 5.5 percent from a year earlier to NT$62.7 billion (US$1.93 billion). If the forecast is correct, the production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor equipment would be higher than the NT$149.7 billion last year and stay above the NT$100 million