Flanders Flare

BLACKBOOK A GLOBAL GUIDE FOR THE DISCERNING TRAVELLER

PHOTO HEIKKI VERDURME

FLANDERS

FLAIR

An understated and once unfancied corner of Old Europe has quietly morphed into the Continent’s next culinary hot spot. By Jeffrey T Iverson CONTACT CENTURION SERVICE FOR BOOKINGS

CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM

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BLACKBOOK A GLOBAL GUIDE FOR THE DISCERNING TRAVELLER

PHOTO HEIKKI VERDURME

FLANDERS

FLAIR

An understated and once unfancied corner of Old Europe has quietly morphed into the Continent’s next culinary hot spot. By Jeffrey T Iverson CONTACT CENTURION SERVICE FOR BOOKINGS

CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM

31

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erious diners today are increasingly looking past the ever-at-odds duo of the Michelin Guide and the World’s 50 Best Restaurants List towards another ranking of the globe’s finest restaurants: the Opinionated About Dining (or OAD) Top 100 List, compiled from 140,000 restaurant reviews by 4,300 critics and experienced foodies. Last year, the restaurant OAD ranked as the best in Europe came as a surprise to all but the most au courant gastronomes – In De Wulf (indewulf. be), a farmhouse turned Michelin-starred restaurant in West

Flanders just across the French border, where young chef Kobe Desramaults has developed an inspired, terroir-based approach to the culinary arts.

Desramaults’s consecration confirms the arrival of a new wave of Flemish chefs who believe local-grown cuisine can excite global-minded gourmets. They were forged in the three-star Belgian and Dutch kitchens of Sergio Herman at the sorely missed Oud Sluis, of Peter Goossens at Hof van Cleve (hofvancleve.com) and of Jonnie Boer at De Librije (librije.com) – the chefs who first put Flanders back on the world’s culinary hot list. Today, Desramaults and his generation embody their mentors’ no-holdsbarred attitudes, but have rejected the multiplication of garnishes and gels and other haute-cuisine excesses, often paring fare down to just a few ingredients. Inspired by locavore chefs like Michel Bras and René Redzepi, they’re elevating the humble bounty of the Flemish countryside (chicory, hop sprouts, asparagus, pork, cheese, beer) alongside the delicacies of the North Sea (mussels and mackerel, langoustine and lobster). As Desramaults puts it, “We’re trying to be as creative as we can with what we have.”

At In De Wulf, Desramaults delights diners with elegantly earthy dishes like wild-foraged Judas ear mushrooms, presented on a log and brushed with fermented celeriac juice and home-

Clockwise from top: the rustic decor of In De Wulf; Gert De Mangeleer in the garden of Hertog Jan; Filip Claeys from De Jonkman; Kobe Desramaults of In de Wulf, with his sous chef, Rose Greene. Previous page: De Jonkman’s baked weever, parsleyroot and juice of roasted laurel

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PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PIET DE KERSGIETER, KRISTOF VRANCKEN, HEIKKI VERDURME, PIET DE KERSGIETER

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Clockwise from above left: table setting at Vrijmoed; veranda dining at Hertog Jan; pouting (a North Sea fish), cockle and kale with a buttermilk sauce. from Publiek; Olly Ceulenaere, at work in the restaurant’s kitchen

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churned butter. Many offerings seem to touch the very heart of Flemish identity, like his Kerremelkstampers, an exquisitely satisfying reinterpretation of a centuries-old peasant dish of potato and buttermilk. Desramaults bakes the potato in a salt crust, one of many centuriesold natural techniques – like fermenting, smoking, ageing and pickling, that he has revived – as he peels back the pervasive French-inspired bourgeois cuisine in search of deeper culinary traditions. “Flanders has such culinary diversity today, which is all the more amazing because we don’t have a really rich food tradition,” says Desramaults. “But our goal is to look into our past to assemble the bits and pieces, to create the future with it.”

Indeed, the future has taken myriad forms across Flanders today. In Ghent, Olly Ceulenaere has created a new kind of Michelin-starred cuisine in his airy bistro Publiek (publiekgent.be), offering meticulouslyprepared, sparklingly minimalist options like pickled herring, peas and horseradish, or desserts like Belgian cherry meringue and basil ice-cream. Nearby, in a lovely art deco townhouse in the city centre, Michaël Vrijmoed of Vrijmoed ( vrijmoed.be) offers a very different ambience, though his intensely flavoured Franco-Belgian cuisine draws from the same seasonal, local produce and seafood.

In Bruges, Filip Claeys, the grandson of a Flemish fisherman, has proven that sustainably fished seafood can yield a two-star cuisine at De Jonkman (dejonkman.be). His exquisite signature dish, Message in a Bottle, is an enlightened ode to the common grey shrimp. Just outside the city at the three-star Hertog Jan (hertog-jan.com), Gert De Mangeleer uses bold molecular techniques to create an avant-garde cuisine from his own vegetables, herbs and flowers. And 30 minutes north on the beautiful Cadzand beach in the Netherlands, Syrco Bakker of Pure C ( pure-c.nl) has created Flemish fusion, freely associating North Sea fish and polder produce with Asian flavours.

The chefs of Flanders have arrived in other cities as well, from the brilliant Davy Schellemans of Veranda (restaurantveranda.be), in Antwerp, to David Martin of La Paix (lapaix1892.com) in Brussels and, farther south Sang-Hoon Degeimbre of L’Air du Temps (airdutemps. be). They are a new breed of toque who are in the vanguard of contemporary cuisine by creating plates at once excitingly foreign and comfortingly familiar.

“I want dining here to be like an adventure, but I hope people feel a kind of nostalgia, too,” says Desramaults.

“I want them to experience, to know this little part of Flanders, so when they leave, they take a piece of Flemish identity with them.”

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PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HEIKKI VERDURME, KRISTOF VRANCKEN, PIET DE KERSGIETER (2)

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