Belgian chef Kobe Desramaults may well be closing his renowned restaurant In De Wulf at the end of this year but he is certainly not stopping there. After announcing that he is closing the restaurant that became a world famous foodie destination, he wants to create a completely different restaurant from In de Wulf and has already found a location in the Belgian city of Gent.
“I want to have the complete essence of what I did at In De Wulf but I will change the frame of the restaurant. Over the past months I have reflected a lot about what I like about my job and I will translate that into the new restaurant,” he told Food and Wine Gazette.
Desramaults is already present in Gent with his restaurant De Vitrine and his bakery/restaurant De Superette.
“The new restaurant will have an open kitchen and we will be working with fire because the latter is something I really like. I also do not like cooking for a lot of people at the same time because that is not cooking. I want to be able to cook for a small group of people.”
The Flemish chef of In De Wulf also wants to change the dining experience. “At the moment, I don’t like the length of time it takes to eat in a restaurant where you can end up sitting at table for four to five hours. When I am a guest in a restaurant, I don’t like a very long lunch or dinner. I want to have a good experience and not feel drunk before the main course has arrived. What I like is that there is fast pace, nearly like you would find in a sushi bar where you taste, taste, taste different dishes and then the meal is over.”
Desramaults said that dinner at the new restaurant will only last a maximum of a few hours in which he will serve dishes in quick succession.
“This is what I want and in effect it is an analysis of all the things I like about my job and all the things I hate about it,” he said.
He said that it did not make business sense to employ so many people in a restaurant as he does at In De Wulf. He also wants to respect work-life balance in the new restaurant. “At In De Wulf, I have people who work from morning to night non-stop. They love it but we will change this. At the new restaurant there will be just one team that will do a dinner service for just four days a week. That way, everybody can have a social life and work-life balance and this means we can focus on what I want to do. I want to reinvent what a restaurant should be like. I cannot do it at In de Wulf so I will do it in this place in Gent,” Desramaults said.
The new restaurant will exist for three years and then the location will disappear, he says.
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