Nick Bril, chef of one of the trendiest restaurants in the world The Jane in Antwerp Belgium will be deejaying at the Best Chef Awards Gala that will take place on 1 October 2018 in Milan. The chef who together with Sergio Herman opened The Jane is also one of the finalists of the awards who is in the running to win the awards for 2018. The global selection of The Best Chef Top 300 has started with all the finalists in the running to win the award for 2018. Last year, the 2017 The Best Chef Awards, held in Warsaw, Poland was awarded to Joan Roca from Spain. This year, the event takes place in Milan and is expected to be attended by chefs from all over the world including the United States, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Japan and all over Europe. This year the initial voting process has been completed and the exclusive world selection of The Best Chef TOP300 finalists have just been published. The final stage of the voting is now open for two months before before … [Read more...]
CKBK: The ‘Spotify for cookbooks’ launches kickstarter campaign
ckbk, a new service providing seamless digital access to the world's best cookbooks, today announced the launch of its kickstarter campaign with exclusive early access, benefits and rewards for founder subscribers. The service has been compared to Spotify as it enables you to have unlimited online access to a curated collection of cookbooks including over 100,000 recipes for a monthly fee. The cookbooks were selected with the input from hundreds of leading chefs and food writers including Nigella Lawson, Yotam Ottolenghi and Fergus Henderson. "We have been thrilled by the response to ckbk since we announced the service earlier this year," said Matthew Cockerill co-founder of ckck. "Our inbox has been overflowing with people joining the waiting list. With ckbk now in beta testing, we are excited to be able to offer early access to founder subscribers through our kickstarter campaign." The ckbk kickstarter video (see below) features culinary icon Harold McGee, renowned British … [Read more...]
Q&A with Kasper Kurdhal: ‘Intellectual stimulation leads to creativity’
Kasper Kurdhal, the executive chef of Le Chalet de la Foret, a two Michelin star restaurant in Brussels loves intellectual stimulation and discussion. It is what guides him at work in his interactions with chef patron Pascal Devalkeneer but it is also something he cherishes in his friendships as you can see from the second part of our interview with this talented chef. He is at his best cooking in a fine-dining environment but away from the cooking he looks for authenticity and simplicity. For our in-depth conversation with Kasper head to our interview here. This is the second part of our interview in our usual Q&A format. Your best ever meal? I think the best ever meal was at Jean-Georges in new York. It was remarkable and the most surprising. I was with Davide Scabin, a very good friend. We created Aqua together. When I was el Bulli, his maitre d’ came to do a stage at the restaurant and the Adria brothers invited him over for two weeks to bring with him his creations. … [Read more...]
Opening the senses to something new as Ana Roš cooks with Christophe Hardiquest at Bon Bon
Before she decided to take up cooking around 14 years ago, Ana Roš was heading to Brussels to work with the European institutions where she had just been offered a job. As fate had it her partner’s father was retiring from the restaurant he owned, the Hiša Franko and there was no one to take over his work expect Victor who would become her husband. On the spot and against the will of her father she decided to stay in Slovenia and build her career in the restaurant. Having knowledge of 5 languages, she did not start in the kitchen but soon she realised that this would be necessary. Yesterday (4th July) she was in Brussels again, this time not because of the offer she had received 14 years ago but rather on the request of Christophe Hardiquest, a chef she really admires after a dining experience she had at the restaurant before this visit. She was the fourth guest to cook at Bon Bon in the series of Bon Bon Origins dinners that chef Christophe Hardiquest is organising as he … [Read more...]
Belgian chef Yves Mattagne to cook at gastronomy week in Crete
Belgian chef Yves Mattagne is currently the guest of the Radisson Blu Beach resort in Crete. He is there for a gastronomy week which started on Wednesday and will come to an end on Sunday 8 July at the Bellevue Restaurant. Guests for the dinners will be able to savour the food of the two Michelin star Brussels restaurant Sea Grill with a view of the Aegean Sea. The Belgian chef will be preparing Red Tuna with a baked goose liver nougatine, fried garlic, daikon, fennel and combava followed by a Tiger Shrimp with Coconut bouillon, verbena, cabbage, red curry, lychee and tangy tomato. This will be followed by a sea bass with oyster maki, burnt leek, romanesco, cockles and haselnut mouselline and a lamb cooked in hay with orange blossom, hummus and ras el hanout juice. The dessert is a banana chiboust served with rjum vanilla, caramel with butter and carat crumble. Mattagne is the chef of Sea Grill since its opening in 1990. The restaurant was awarded with a Michelin star in … [Read more...]
Andy Gaskin: The world is far more food oriented than it was in the past
You could say Andy Gaskin is a nomad. Born in London in 1962, his cooking journey has taken him from London to Anguilla with stops among others in Malta, Porto Cervo, Rome, Paris, Monte Carlo, Sicily, Africa, Thailand, China, the Pacific island of Bora Bora and more recently in Croatia. His love of travel has given him the opportunity to move and discover new places, get new ideas and create recipes and memories along the way. In the years he has been inspired by Professor Hubert from his culinary school, who taught him the basics, Marco Pierre White, whose dedication to top quality and perfection he immensely appreciates and Heston Blumenthal, with his creativity and constant re-examination of all the culinary aspects. Andy Gaskin does not consider himself as a cook or chef but rather a hyperactive artist with food as his medium and cooking as his chief technique. He describes his own style of cooking as innovative, light and inspired by the Mediterranean, with … [Read more...]
Vegetarian menu is biggest challenge of my entire career – René Redzepi
Last week, Noma 2.0 turned fully vegetarian as the first ever full vegetarian menu was served at the restaurant. Guests at the Copenhagen restaurant were served a full vegetarian menu from start to finish. Chef René Redzepi has said on his Instagram Stories feed that the vegetarian menu is without a shadow of doubt the biggest challenge of his entire career. "We are very happy even though it was difficult because there is something that feels like you are cooking the future by choosing the plant kingdom," Redzepi said. "We will see," he said. Redzepi and his team have often worked with vegetables but this is the first time that they have no fish or meat at the end of the menu.The chef said that they had been working like mad people for three months for this menu. Noma last week moved from the Ocean Menu to the Vegetable menu where they will be exploring the plant kingdom and everything that is edible, cooking with what they find underground, above ground, near the water and … [Read more...]
Sergio Herman to open third restaurant in Cadzand called Blueness
Sergio Herman, the Dutch chef who closed one of the best restaurants in the world, the Oud Sluis, is set to open his third restaurant in the seaside resort of Cadzand-Bad in Zeeland, the Netherlands. The Japanese inspired bar and restaurant called Blueness will be housed inside the refurbished and extended Strand Hotel which also houses his restaurant Pure C led by chef Syrco Bakker. Last year, the Dutch chef who lives in Belgium also opened AIRrepublic, a restaurant located in a pavilion in the newly build marina of Cadzand within walking distance of the hotel and Pure C. The two restaurants in Cadzand both have a Michelin star. The new restaurant will be housed in the hotel lobby of the Strand Hotel. The opening of the renewed Strand Hotel will take place this summer though the exact date is not yet known. During Phase 1, the new Strandhotel will have 30 hotel rooms and 4 suits. The new hotel lobby and bar will be merged. The bar will be open daily and will have a … [Read more...]
Kasper Kurdhal (Le Chalet de la Foret): The offer from Ferran Adria that was too good to accept
When Ferran Adria was riding the crest of popularity he offered Kasper Kurdahl, then 27, the possibility to become his sous-chef and go to Seville to open a restaurant with him. Most people would have jumped at that opportunity or pinched themselves to make sure they heard it right. But Kasper is not like that. While most people would think this is too good an offer to refuse, the Danish chef thought otherwise and reasoned that that it was too good an offer to accept so he turned it down. Were you too young I asked him. “No. I was very precise about it. If I had accepted, I would have become a product of el Bulli for the rest of my life. I did not want that. I wanted to be myself,” the Danish executive chef of Le Chalet de la Foret, in Brussels, Belgium told Food and Wine Gazette in an interview. Kasper doesn’t look back at that decision and does not regret it. “I am happy with the decision I took at the time. I think I did the right thing,” he said. “Ferran was a genius, an … [Read more...]
Esenzi to open in Malta later this year with Tim Butler at the helm
British entrepreneur Mark Weingard has the ambition to turn a new restaurant that is set to open in Valletta, Malta later this year into one of the world’s most spectacular restaurants and also one of the best in the world. The chef at the helm is Tim Butler, who is also chef and co-owner of Esenzi in Phuket. Esenzi will open in a new boutique hotel being currently refurbished on St Barbara Bastions which is considered as Malta’s best street with a spectacular view of the Grand Harbour. Mark Weingard has set an ambitious target of November for the opening of the restaurant. The 23 room hotel, Iniala, is scheduled to open around March next year. Tim Butler, the chef and co-owner of the restaurant told Food and Wine Gazette in an interview he has been visiting Malta every month since January to build his knowledge of local produce and to get a feel of the clientele and their habits. He is also experiencing the huge change taking place in Valletta with the constant openings of hotels … [Read more...]