In De Wulf, the world famous restaurant in Dranouter, Belgium that will close its doors in December has been put up for sale.
Kobe Desramaults, the chef of the restaurant had announced last year that the restaurant would be closing this year. On Sunday, on the Facebook page of the restaurant, the Flemish chef put up a post that the multifunctional building which is completely renovated is for sale.
The post says that the building can be run as a restaurant, a holiday house or a bed and breakfast with 10 rooms having all amenities.
Although the sale of the restaurant does not come as a surprise as Kobe Desramaults had told Food and Wine Gazette in an interview earlier this year that he had reached a point where he needed to decide whether to buy the property from his mother or not when he took the decision to close the restaurant, seeing it officially does have a certain effect on those who have followed Kobe’s rise over the past years.
The Flemish chef (and In De Wulf) rose to fame over the past years for a unique style of cooking that is pure, natural and has no classic dishes or traditional sauces. He is one of the most internationally recognised Belgian chefs and has created one of the top destinations for foodies in the world. (His restaurant was number 1 in the Top 100 European list of Opinionated about Dining in 2014 and 4th in 2015). He was also listed for some time in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants List, chef Kobe Desramaults announced his decision to close the restaurant last year.
Earlier this year, he told Food and Wine Gazette in an interview that he had reached a point where he needed to decide whether to buy the property from his mother or not and having thought for very long as to whether he wanted to take a loan that would tie him to a place for another 20 years he had decided otherwise. “A restaurant like In De Wulf is very hard to maintain because you need a lot of people and you need to constantly have 40 covers otherwise it will not work. Maybe I’ve had it. I have been here for 12 years, given it my all. In the first years, I was working day and night, seven years a week. Maybe that’s a West Flemish thing to do but I was driven, working hard and never looking back. I was looking to the future but things start to change,” said Kobe.
“I now have a daughter and it started to make me think about the future. I am still ambitious but I want to do it in a different frame. With In De Wulf, I have to be in the restaurant. Even being here today at De Vitrine because we have an emergency in the kitchen means that people who go to In De Wulf will be disappointed because I am not there. It was time for a change,” the Flemish chef said.
Desramaults will open a new restaurant in Gent in 2017. “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 new restaurant will exist for three years and then the location will disappear, he says.
Leave a Reply