Go back some years and no one would have bet a dime on Eric Vildgaard. Maybe neither Eric believed that if it got dark enough he would be able to see the stars. Except Tina Kragh Vildgaard. She saw potential and she believed they could not just create a family together but also a restaurant. She had fallen in love with Eric despite his troubled past. "The most attractive part about Eric is that he is so passionate," she said as she looked him in the eyes. "He does everything at 100 per cent. That is what I fell in love with and I am still in love with. It is his passion and never being one to compromise." The minute Tina took Eric to the room which would end up being the highly acclaimed Jordanaer restaurant on the outskirts of Copenhagen, he thought it was a joke. He had other ideas and it certainly was not a restaurant outside the centre of the Danish city. She had walked home from a business meeting and told him that they were going for a drive. "We arrived in this place and she … [Read more...]
The time for creativity is now – David Ghysels
BRUSSELS: The phone rings. David Ghysels, the man behind Hakuna Matata, an advertising and communications agency specialised around food brings out his phone to switch it off. It is an old Nokia. One rarely seen nowadays. How can the man behind Dinner in the Sky and a communications agency use a phone like this, I wonder. He tells me without any prompting or asking that he does not like distractions and prefers to have the time to make things happen by accident. “Bring two ideas that have nothing to do with each other and that’s were creation happens. A guy working in communication and gastronomy and someone working with cranes might not have much in common but this was what led to Dinner in the Sky,” he said. “The reason I don’t have a smart phone is that I like to spend time exploring, I prefer to pick up a magazine if I am at the doctor. Same for music, I prefer to listen to the radio than to a playlist. When you leave space for creativity, you find that this is when … [Read more...]
Small is beautiful: What we learned after closing Hertog Jan and how we plan to start again
ANTWERP: When Gert de Mangeleer and Joachim Boudens announced the closure of Hertog Jan at the end of 2018 it was a shock to the Belgian gastronomy scene. At the helm of a three Michelin star restaurant, one of just two in the country, they were at the top of their game. Many could not understand how two relatively young entrepreneurs, a chef and host, could quit at the peak. But the two had very clear ideas and over the past years they have emerged as two exceptional entrepreneurs that have created a unique L.E.S.S. Eatery in Bruges (the concept has been copied by others since) and Bar Bulot. Today, they have announced the return to fine dining with a restaurant that will create a new chapter for Hertog Jan. Gone is the 70 cover restaurant. It will also move to Antwerp from Zedelgem on the outskirts of Bruges. Instead they will create a new restaurant with just 12 seats. Ivan Brincat sat down with Gert de Mangeleer and Joachim Boudens to learn more and also to delve deeper … [Read more...]
Madn77: Making fresh blended tea to match your mood one cup at a time
BRUSSELS: Naina Madan developed her concept of making fresh hand-blended teas, tisane and chai customised to match moods when things were taking a negative turn in the world. That was not in March this year when COVID-19 brought about a major disruption to the world we knew. “I came up with the concept of Madn77 around three years ago. There was Trump, there was Brexit, there was too much negativity around me and I recall that my mother would have a tea for every moment,” Naina told Food and Wine Gazette. Her original plan was to focus on consumers but selling to cafes’ and restaurants picked up well and became the focus of the business until COVID-19 struck and she had to completely rethink her strategy. “I was like a very small fish in the pond and there were many more established brands but I was lucky because everyone was open to listen and when Filgranes Café decided to serve my teas it opened many doors and sales started to grow,” she said. What’s unique about Madn77 is … [Read more...]
‘This crisis is making us focus on the way we consume, the way we travel, how we treat earth’
BRUSSELS/LYON: What does the future hold for restaurants and guides like Michelin or the World’s 50 Best Restaurants? I’ve always thought that we were living a time that I liked to call ‘peak food’. Everywhere you looked, food, restaurants, chefs were part of our daily life. Then came COVID-19, lockdowns, closed borders and everything has been put into question. Over a virtual coffee, I sat down with Florent Bonnefoy, an entrepreneur who is currently working with clients across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and France on new food-related venture development, restaurants brand building and customer experience maximisation to speak about the challenges that COVID-19 has brought to the restaurant world. In this wide-ranging conversation with the French entrepreneur, we discuss the future of fine dining, the restaurant business, deliveries and the acceleration of trends that this crisis has brought about. IB: The world of fine dining as we know it is changing. Rene Redzepi … [Read more...]
Charlotte Collard: The model turned digital food entrepreneur
Food may come as an afterthought when you are modelling but for Charlotte Collard it was another story. A former model turned digital entrepreneur, she has lived in cities like New York, Los Angeles and London to mention a few before returning back to her roots in Belgium where she lived for 18 years before leaving to New York to pursue her modelling career. She has today established herself as a TV presenter and also set up a digital food business as well as a big presence on Instagram. “I’ve always loved cooking. My grandfather lived in Canada when I was young and he had a very big house with a lot of land and all the vegetables and fruits would come from the garden. He would smoke trout from the pond, he would hunt, he taught us how to bake bread waking us up at 5am. Everything was homemade so I learned to cook when I was very young.” Charlotte created a digital food business three years ago. “When I moved to Zurich in 2009 after leaving New York I decided to create a … [Read more...]
Diogenes the Dog: A wine bar in London that goes against the grain
With a laser focused vision Sunny Hodge is determined to shake up the London wine scene. He has set the bar high, wanting to turn a former pub in Elephant and Castle into one of London's top destination wine bars and after just a few weeks open he believes he is on the right track. The son of an Olympian and commonwealth games silver medalist and a graduate of Mechanical Engineering he has a contrarian vision just like Diognes, a Greek cynic who inspired the name of the wine bar. “I want Diogenes The Dog to be a place where people come to try something new and different and that they cannot try anywhere else, a place that will attract wine drinkers, wine suppliers, winemakers and that gives you a unique wine experience and a truly unique evening,” Sunny told Food and Wine Gazette when we met him at the newly opened wine bar and shop. His objective is to turn the spot he shaped with his own bare hands from a dodgy boozer in Elephant and Castle into one of the top 5 wine bars in … [Read more...]
Anne Sophie Pic and David Sinapian: Putting human resources at the centre of their business
More and more professionals such as lawyers and engineers are showing an interest in gastronomy says David Sinapian, CEO of Anne-Sophie Pic and president of Les Grandes Tables du Monde. "We have found that staff that do not necessarily have culinary training are not only interested but also capable of following their dreams. They want to be creative and do something different," David told Food and Wine Gazette after his presentation at the congress organised by the collective of chefs from Wallonia, Generation W. "What matters most is their motivation and not their training. We have also found that diversity is extremely important for our business. What people might lack in technical skills can be compensated by other skills such as management skills," he said. David took over the family business with his wife Anne Sophie Pic more than 20 years ago. Since then, they have grown the Pic group to include not only the three Michelin star restaurant (they got the three Michelin … [Read more...]
Andy Hayler: The man who has eaten in all three Michelin star restaurants in the world
Andy Hayler is the only man in the world to have eaten in all three Michelin star restaurants. He first completed this feat in 2004 and then did it again in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and this year. He has been reviewing restaurants on his website since 1994 making it one of the oldest in the world and the site is updated with several new reviews each week. Eating in all three Michelin star restaurants has become more complicated given that the number of such restaurants has increased from 49 in 2004 to 113 this year. While Andy does not like to term any one restaurant as the best he particularly likes the cooking at Michel Guerard's restaurant Pres des Eugenie in France because he likes that style of food, but there are many other fine restaurants that are objectively up there on a par. Other particular favourites include Schloss Berg in Germany, Le Calandre in Italy, Hotel de Ville in Switzerland and Mizai in Kyoto. He believes there are a number of two star restaurants that … [Read more...]
Bishop’s Gin: Blending tradition with modernity
Bishop's Gin is a new London Dry Gin that has just been launched on the Belgian market. Created by Thierry Ponet, founder of Ponet Spirits and Matthieu Chaumont of Brussels cocktail bar Hortense, it is a gin that is steeped in tradition while being innovative at the same time. The gin with its distinct label designed by Stranger and Stranger is already competing for the best packaging in the World's Packaging Design Society. This new gin is the result of a collaboration and a discussion between master cocktail maker Matthieu Chaumont who was on the watch for a versatile gin and Thierry Ponet who wanted to revive his family's anestral genever craftsmanship. Ponet lived in London for 15 years before moving back to Belgium around two years ago. "Thierry wanted to relaunch the distillation activity of his family but we reflected that it would be better to create a gin rather than genever. The name Bishop's Gin comes from the fact that when they were looking at Thierry's family … [Read more...]