When Vilhjalmur Sigurdarson left Iceland on a one way ticket to Belgium little did he imagine that he would be settling in the small city or village of Ypres, known more for the battle field that was World War 1 than for a dining destination. But as a young chef, you cannot say he was not determined. After an experience at Texture in London, he had returned to his home country, Iceland, thinking he would settle there but after three weeks he realised that he needed to leave the island. “In London, I came to experience exceptional produce. It was everywhere and the quality was like nothing I had seen before,” the young Icelandic chef told Food and Wine Gazette. “I realised that this was not possible in Iceland. I wanted to leave as soon as possible.” He had a list of restaurants in mind that he wanted to work in to gain experience, What he was looking for was not the what or the how the restaurant worked but rather the why. That has remained his philosophy till this day. He … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2017
Chambre Séparée: where cooking is like theatre and eating is like attending a performance by Kobe Desramaults
When Kobe Desramaults said he wanted to reinvent the dining experience he was clearly being very serious about it. The chef of the renowned restaurant in De Wulf, in Dranouter, Belgium, which closed in December, has been serving guests in his new restaurant Chambre Séparée in the Belgian city of Gent since opening the new restaurant in June. In a completely different format, the talented Belgian chef is doing what he loves best, cooking with fire in front of guests in what can easily be described as a unique experience. The restaurant only has 16 covers and the diners all sit around the kitchen. Here the cooking takes centre stage and the experience is focused on Kobe and his team working in harmony to serve a limited number of guests while cooking with different forms of fire. There is no hiding for Kobe and his team. In a completely open environment you will know what is going on in the kitchen, whether there is a problem or not. Most importantly you will know whether the key … [Read more...]
A perfect meal: Enrico Crippa reflects on collaboration dinner with Zaiyu Hasegawa
Enrico Crippa is a perfectionist who loves to set the bar extremely high. Before the four hands dinner with Zaiyu Hasegawa, he comes to show us the dishes that will be prepared for the dinner. That will allow the photographers attending the event to enjoy the dinner without the stress of having to take photos during the dinner. In passing he tells Andrea Petrini, of GELINAZ! fame that he is extremely pleased with the menu and how the dishes that Zaiyu and he had prepared have blended well. “Coming from you, that is something,” Andrea tells him. Reflecting on the first four hands dinner that he ever hosted at Piazza Duomo in Alba, Enrico Crippa tells me he felt a sense of liberation when the dinner finished because he felt it had gone very well. “When I arrived home, I started thinking how simple it ended up being, how easy it was to work with Zaiyu and how easy it was to blend the two cuisines together.” Enrico says that seeing the menu together and looking at the dishes as … [Read more...]
50 Top Pizza: an initiative to find the best pizza in Italy
Pepe in Grani in Caserta is top pizzeria If you are heading to Italy any time soon and are looking for the best pizza that you can eat anywhere in the world, then you need to take a look at 50 Top Pizza. This is the name of a new website and initiative to discover the best pizzerias in Italy and therefore the world. The website, that has just been launched, is the brainchild of Albert Sapere who believes that the pizza movement in Italy is like the NBA for basketball. Sapere is curator of the site together with Luciano Pignataro, a journalist and Italian foodblogger as well as Barbara Guerra who with Albert created Le Strade della Mozzarella or On the Mozzarella roads which aims to raise awareness about mozzarella di bufala campana around the world. According to Sapere, Italian pizzerias play a 'world championship' between them because not only are they exceptional artisans but also because Italy is the country which has the best produce for pizza. In total 100 inspectors, … [Read more...]
San Degeimbre to open third San in Gent in October
San Degeimbre chef of two Michelin star restaurant L' Air du Temps in Liernu and creator of two successful Brussels restaurants called San will be opening the third 'San' restaurant in Gent in October. The news had been in the air for a long time but it has now been confirmed. The Belgian chef had said on the opening of the first San in Rue de Flandres, Brussels that he wanted to take the concept to other Belgian cities and if possible also outside Belgium. After the successful opening of the restaurant in the Brussels centre and then a second one in the area of Sablon, the 'bowl' concept will also be available in Gent. The current chef of San Sablon will be taking the lead at the new restaurant in Gent which is expected to be close to popular Gent restaurant Vrijmoed. Gent is therefore set to welcome another of Belgium's top chefs after the successful opening of Kobe Desramault's Chambree Séparée. With his bowl and spoon concept, the Belgian-Korean chef is going back to … [Read more...]
The story of Villa Louise: a private kitchen aiming to reach 100 stars
Since 2012, Villa Louise, an offshoot of asset manager Creutz and Partners has been inviting some of the world's best chefs into its private kitchen to collaborate, cook and share their creativity with their clients. Now, in its sixth season, it has welcomed chefs like Sergio Herman, Alain Passard, Rasmus Kofoed, Gert De Mangeleer, Sang Hoon Degeimbre, Pierre Gagnaire, Christian Bau, Sven Elverfeld, Virgilio Martinez, Peter Goossens, Joachim Wissler and many others. Today, the total number of Michelin stars has reached 65 but that number grows each year and the aim is to reach at least 100, Yves Creutz, executive member of the board of directors told Food and Wine Gazette in an interview. But how did the idea start, how difficult was it to start this and what leads chefs to go and cook at Villa Louise? How did you come up with the idea to start Villa Louise and in particular to invite chefs over to cook at your premises? We are an exclusive Asset Manager (Creutz & … [Read more...]
Mon bistro d’été : Christophe Hardiquest’s playground
Mon bistro d’été by Christophe Hardiquest, chef of two Michelin starred Brussels based restaurant Bon Bon could easily be defined as the chef's playground. Although this is not necessarily his element given that he is used to cooking in his fine dining restaurant, it is evident that the chef and his team are enjoying themselves in the new pop-up restaurant that has taken the Brussels scene by storm and is indeed one of the most talked about places in the Belgian capital city this summer. Housed in the old Chez Marie restaurant in the Flagey area of Brussels, the restaurant may have been closed for over two years but you would not notice from the vibes and the atmosphere that fills the place. But that is to be expected given the fact that the reservations never stopped the minute they opened and by the time the restaurant had opened earlier this month, 4,500 reservations had been made for the two-month pop-up restaurant. If you do not have a booking, don't despair. The … [Read more...]
Bo Bech: The Bride of the Fox and the excitement of that first kiss
Change is something that most of us human beings are not used to but that is not the case of chef Bo Bech. Since last year he spends most of his time in New York, having left the kitchen of his own restaurant Geist since he considered himself to have become the bottleneck. He went to the United States and precisely New York with the intention of opening a restaurant but then thought that he would be running away from himself. “I seriously thought about opening a restaurant in New York when I left Copenhagen,” Bo said. “But I realised that if I was going to open a restaurant I would be copying myself. It was like I was running away from myself, like I was chasing my own tail.” Since then he has organised 16 special events called The Bride of the Fox. These events only exist once. They are organised in different venues like the stage of a theatre or the kitchen of the World’s Best restaurant Eleven Madison Park. When he arrived in New York, he reflected about what he was … [Read more...]
Weekly roundup of great reads on food and wine #120
‘If the children grow it themselves, they’re more likely to eat it’: “These are peas,” says a tiny girl in a red bucket hat, her face a tapas of freckles. “We eat them for snack time. They just taste like ordinary peas; like you’d eat for your dinner.” I am standing in the Marlborough School allotment, tucked into the side of a sunny hill in Falmouth, Cornwall, surrounded by children no taller than my hip, as they chew on nasturtiums, studiously check the soil temperature and throw themselves on to the grass beside a bed of carrots to look for slugs. This is where groups of Marlborough students, aged five to 11, and their parents, come and grow their own courgettes, broad beans, kale, carrots and herbs, all to end up in their school dinners. London restaurants – at tipping point? I can still recall the details of a conversation 15 years ago with my friend Danny Meyer, the successful New York restaurateur, photographed above at his restaurant Maialino by Melissa Hom. He was … [Read more...]
Maria Canabal and the difficult plight of women in the food and restaurant world
Maria Canabal, journalist and founder of Parabere Forum is on a mission to raise awareness on the importance of gender balance in the food industry. She has the figures to prove that the plight of women in the restaurant as well as the food industry is not something that would make any industry proud. Women are paid 28 per cent less than men in the industry making it the second worse industry of all. Only the IT industry fares worse. She was speaking at the first ever congress of the W Food Festival organised in Namur for the first time by Generation W, the collective of chefs from the Belgian region of Wallonia. Food events have a tendency to miss women. Only MAD, the conference organised by Danish chef René Redzepi every two years in Copehagen achieves gender balance. Most of the other conferences have a very dismal female representation with Taste of Paris having just 5% and Omnovore 14%. Only 2 per cent of judges in the San Pellegrino Young chefs are women and there are … [Read more...]