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Amsterdam
Restaurant De Kas
The spiritual home of Greenpeace, bicycles, dogs and semi-naked women in glass shop fronts, Amsterdam is an unlikely place to find the restaurant of your dreams. But from the moment a bowl of fruity green olives and oven-warm bread is placed on the table at Restaurant De Kas, I am smitten.
Mind you, the food would have to be greasy pig droppings to spoil the mood. A fifteen minute tram ride from the red light area, Restaurant De Kas is essentially a large greenhouse set in idyllic parklands strewn with exotic bird life. In summer, diners sit on a terrace overlooking the landscaped vegetable gardens, and stroll through glasshouses filled with wall-to-wall heirloom tomato varieties. In winter, they stand by the huge fire place in the sleek bar, drinking Champagnes and herbal infusions snipped from the herb garden. At other times, they sit inside the towering walls of glass, on smart banquettes, dining on the set menu of the day.
Gert-Jan Hageman, a former Michelin-starred chef, bought the rundown, ramshackle nursery in 1995 from the Amsterdam Council, who had used it to cultivate trees for the city's parks. After completely rebuilding the place, retaining only the original girders, Hageman opened De Kas early in 2001, with a spanking on-site greenhouse and herb garden supervised by local vegetable grower Walter Abna, and a gleaming open kitchen headed by Ronald Kunis, who had previously cooked at the River Cafe in London and the Moosewood in New York.
What makes de Kas very special is that there is no menu and no choice. You get what they want to give you, which is so directly linked to what's growing in the restaurant's own gardens and on its farm on the outskirts of Amsterdam, that it's very hard for even the pickiest eater to not surrender immediately.
How, and why, does De Kas exist? Hageman says he tasted an heirloom tomato and suddenly realised all food should taste as good and as natural as it did. De Kas runs to three full-time gardeners, and all twelve chefs spend one day every week in the garden.
There are other ingredient-driven restaurants (River Cafe, most notably) and others with take-it-or-leave-it set menus (Chez Panisse, Berkeley; Sally Clarke's) but somehow Hageman has pulled it all together into an extremely joyful, hedonistic package.
If the world was intelligent enough, De Kas would serve as a blueprint for the restaurants of the future.
Park Frankendael, Kamerlingh Onneslaan 3, Amsterdam Tel 00 31 20 462 4562
Lunch Mon-Fri Dinner Mon-Sat
For updates, check out Terry Durack's restaurant column in the Review magazine in the Independent on Sunday every Sunday.
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