The first guests of the new noma will be welcomed on 15 February with the first menu celebrating Scandinavian seafood which is at its best during the cold winter months. Reservations for the first season of the new noma open tomorrow 16 November at 4pm CET time and guests will be able to book for the period from 15 February to 29 April 2018. The year has been divided into three seasons during which the menu will change dramatically to match the type of ingredients that are at their peak at any given time of the year. Each serving of the first menu will include some element from the ocean. Please keep this in mind when booking a table. If you have an aversion or allergy to any foods from the ocean, or adhere to a vegetarian or vegan diet, please join us during one of our other two seasons. The other two seasons are the vegetable season which will be served from early summer to early fall. This menu is perfect for vegetarians and vegans and will make full use of noma's urban … [Read more...]
Unprecedented five day restaurant swap by Mauro Colagreco and Jorge Vallejo
GELINAZ! came up with the shuffle in which chefs would travel to an unknown restaurant and cook one service. Now, chef Mauro Colagreco and Jorge Vallejo are taking the idea to the next level in what could be billed as the Shuffle 2.0. From 22nd to 26th November, the two chefs and their teams will swap restaurants, taking their signature dishes across the Atlantic for an unprecedented, exclusive, restaurant event. Mauro and seven of his team will host a pop-up at Quintonil in Mexico City, while Jorge and his chefs will simultaneously take over Mirazur on the Côte d’Azur. Chef Mauro Colagreco currently hold’s two Michelin stars at Restaurant Mirazur, Menton, and gained fourth place in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants this year. A long-standing friend of Mauro, Jorge Vallejo is one of South America’s brightest culinary stars, and is currently ranked 22nd in the World’s 50 Best list. The idea was conceived following the enormous success of a one-off autumnal dinner that … [Read more...]
Eric Fernez is the Gault & Millau Belgian chef of the year
Eric Fernez chef of d'Eugénie à Emilie is this year's Gault & Millau chef of the year. This was announced during the launch of the 2018 guide which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. The chef of the restaurant in Baudour, Bergen was given this award for his perfectly executed classic cuisine. The anonymous inspectors of the guide have visited and reviewed over 1,280 restaurants this year. Peter Goossens, the chef of Hof van Cleve has retained a 19.5 on 20 score for the 15th year in the row. He is the only chef to have achieved this result for 15 consecutive years. The other restaurant with the same score is Brussels restaurant Bon Bon by chef Christophe Hardiquest. The new restaurant by Kobe Desramaults in Gent Chambre Separee was awarded 17.5 points, the same score as D'Eugénie à Émilie, Nuance and the Chalet de la Forêt. Newcomers Zet'Joe by Geert Van Hecke and Hoorseele by Dany Hoorseele both got a 17 score. The young chefs of the year for Gault & Millau … [Read more...]
Amber to close temporarily for complete refurbishment next year
World acclaimed Hong Kong restaurant Amber by chef Richard Ekkebus will be closing for a complete refurbishment for four months in the summer of 2018, the Dutch chef told Food and Wine Gazette in an interview to be published in the coming days. Ekkebus who opened the restaurant at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong 13 years ago said that they will be starting afresh. “It is going to be like a reopening. We will need to learn how to cook again. It is a very big exercise and we have been working on this for the past three years,” he said. Chef of what was once called the 'Da Vinci code menu restaurant' because of the avant garde approach he took to Hong Kong traditions, Ekkebus said that he felt that ‘we are coming to a point where everybody loves us and we need to find something new to push a little bit further and to get clients a bit outside their comfort zone.” Without going too much into the details on the refurbishment which is still being planned together with the … [Read more...]
Mater Iniciativa has become essential to Central restaurant says chef Virgilio Martinez
Virgilio Martinez, chef of acclaimed restaurant Central, in Lima, Peru has been leading a team of researchers travelling across Peru collecting ingredients that grow on the banks of a river in the Amazon jungle, in the middle of the frozen Puna grasslands or at more than 13000 feet above sea level on a snow-covered mountain top. He believes that the diversity of the country demands this type of expedition. That sense of expedition has led to worldwide fame. Today, Virgilio sees Mater Iniciativa, the non-profit organisation he set up as a crucial part of his work to the extent that he tells me that Central Restaurante, the acclaimed restaurant would not exist without the non-profit organisation Mater Iniciativa, the biological and cultural research centre that he set up. "We are working with ingredients that we have not seen before and the first thing we have to ascertain is whether they are edible or not," Virgilio Martinez tells Food and Wine Gazette when we caught up with him … [Read more...]
Rasmus Kofoed of Copenhagen restaurant Geranium latest chef to cook at Villa Louise
The chef of three Michelin star restaurant, Geranium, in Copenhagen Denmark, Rasmus Kofoed was the latest guest chef at Villa Louise in Aachen, Germany for a dinner at the end of October. The Danish chef created a menu which included some of his most iconic dishes which are served at his restaurant in the Danish capital including the ‘edible’ razor clams, a dish he served to Michelin guide inspectors who left the shells intact. (See story here). In its sixth season, Villa Louise has been organising these private dinners since 2012 and has welcomed chefs like Alain Passard, Sergio Herman (who also cooked in October a week before Rasmus), Pierre Gagnaire, Sven Elverfeld, Virgilio Martinez, Gert de Mangeleer and many more. Villa Louise, is an offshoot of asset manager Creutz and Partners and they have been inviting some of the world’s best chefs to cook at their premises to collaborate, cook and share their creativity with their clients. This was the first time that Rasmus … [Read more...]
Niko Romito to cook at David Kinch’s Manresa for 15 year anniversary
David Kinch, chef of Los Gatos restaurant Manresa is celebrating the 15th year anniversary of the opening of the acclaimed restaurant with a visit by Italian three Michelin star chef Niko Romito of Reale. Together they will cook a collaborative 10-course menu that showcases the styles of both chefs. The dinners will be organised on November 11 and November 12. “Easily one of the best meals I had this year was at Chef Niko Romito’s three-Michelin star Reale in Castel di Sangro, Italy. His cooking is deceptively simple in the presentation and reveals thoughtful, emotional, and provocative ideas under the surface, a style I greatly admire,” says Kinch. “I’m honored that he’s agreed to join us in our kitchen as part of our 15-year anniversary celebrations at Manresa.” A self-taught cook with deep roots in Italy, Chef Romito put aside his interest in working in finance when he took the helm at Reale in 2000, turning his late father’s bakery into a restaurant that is now highly … [Read more...]
San opens in Gent
Sang Hoon Degeimbre, Belgian chef of L' Air du Temps in Liernu and creator of two successful Brussels restaurants called San has opened the third 'San' restaurant in Gent this week. After the successful opening of the first San restaurant in the Brussels centre and the second one in the area of Sablon, the ‘bowl’ concept is now also open in the Flemish part of Belgium for the first time. This is the third restaurant San Degeimbre has opened in as many years and it is not excluded that he will also take the concept to other Belgian cities and also outside Belgium. The chef who will be responsible for the Gent restaurant is Joël Rammelsberg. The concept is the same. Food is served in a bowl and you eat with a spoon. The concept had been created during business lunches at two Michelin star restaurant L'Air du Temps. Each bowl reflects a destination and the bowls change each month. There are two menus served at San. The lunch menu costs €28 and includes a starter, a main … [Read more...]
A new ‘Standard’ for sourdough pizzas in Antwerp
At the repurposed PAKT site in Antwerp you will find the largest shared roof garden in Belgium. Measuring over 1800 square metres, it has a 200 metres squared greenhouse, 150 metres squared of hay and straw bale gardens, six chickens, 30 fruit trees, beehives and much more.The site has becoming a melting pot of creative business in renovated warehouses. It is now also home to 'Standard', a food outlet that is offering sourdough pizzas baked in a wood-fired oven and salads prepared with fresh, organic herbs and vegetables grown on the roof of PAKT. This is an ambitious city farming project on the roofs of the old industrial site between Lamorinièrestraat, the Groen Kwartier and Lange Leemstraat.The team behind Standard are aiming to set a new standard for sourdough pizza and salad. To develop the perfect sourdough - a process that began two years ago - they travelled to Italy several times. “We work with sourdough because it is easy to digest and does not contain sugar, which makes it … [Read more...]
Three new books by Rene Redzepi and a bi-annual publication on MAD to look forward to
René Redzepi, founder and head chef of noma, will be publishing three books starting in October 2018 as well as a bi-annual publication called Dispatches from September 2018. The partnership with Lia Ronnen, publisher and editorial director of Artisan, has just been announced and it will build on the announced a new the pioneering work of the acclaimed Copenhagen restaurant. In October 2018, Artisan will publish the first of three new books with Redzepi, launching the Foundations of Flavour series that the chef and his team have conceived specifically to share their knowledge and techniques with home cooks. In addition, Artisan and Redzepi will launch Dispatches, a biannual series designed to further the ideas and conversations of MAD, the nonprofit established by Redzepi to galvanize the creative potential of the global cooking community. The first book by Redzepi, Foundations of Flavour: The Noma Guide to Fermentation, is a major new work and will be published in October … [Read more...]