Yesterday, top chef Jonnie Boer passed away at the age of 60. A huge loss and a great loss. MASTERS had the honor of working with Jonnie several times. Wherever he went, he left an indelible impression, always together with his Thérèse. His important mark on the culinary world will always remain: a master chef, but above all a special and real person. In 2017, Jonnie and Thérèse were guest editors in the then LXRY Magazine. This interview also showed the unique character of the couple.
Interview published in LXRY #30 – 2017
Three stars, two souls, one thought: better rich in the head than a million in the bank. They have become rich through everything they have experienced in the past thirty years at De Librije, the people they have met, the adventures they have sought out. Jonnie and Thérèse make life as beautiful as the dishes they serve.
How it all started
Jonnie: “I was always busy with food, I was a real glutton. When I was twelve, I worked in my father's café, De Harmonie in Giethoorn. I tapped beer and sometimes did something in the kitchen. I remember making my first mussel soup, just to try it out. And 'Dutch pizza', a recipe I had seen in the Margriet: cut slices of bread, slide them against each other, then cheese and tomato and so on. And if I had caught pike-perch or eel, or found duck or lapwing eggs, they would go into the pan. Those were my first finger exercises in the kitchen. After the culinary school in Groningen, I started working in De Boerderij on the Leidseplein. That was one of the few star restaurants in the Netherlands. That's where I got the click with cooking. For the first time in my life I saw a scallop, a piece of foie gras, caviar... After I had responded to an advertisement in De Librije, I arrived there on 1 September 1986 into the kitchen. Mr. Meijers was ahead and I stood behind the stove with chef Leen Ripke. I had all the space to experiment, because it was hardly ever full: at most two tables in the evening. When Leen left, Mr. Meijers asked if I didn't want to become a chef. I was only prepared to stay if I would have a lot of freedom. Because I wanted to be able to develop myself.”
The love
Thérèse: “I met Jonnie in a discotheque in Steenwijk. We clicked right away. But at the time we were both still in a relationship. After a few months we met again in the same discotheque and that was it. I was at the Hotel School and worked as a waiter at the hotel-restaurant De Prinsenije in Giethoorn on weekends. Now that I was seeing Jonnie, I also started working at De Librije during the week.” Jonnie: “We had told Mr. Meijers to go on holiday. He was always in the business. 'Then we'll keep the business running.' Then he went to the South of France for three weeks with his wife and children. Thérèse and I enjoyed running the place so much that we suggested buying De Librije from him. He was 63 and had had enough of it. His wife in particular, because he wasn't making a dime from it. We knew what we wanted: to continue the business as it is, but to give it a little bit of our own twist. We had to go to the bank to get a loan of 200.000 guilders for the inventory and goodwill. The only time in my life that I wore a tie, haha.”
Gastronomy in the Netherlands
Jonnie: “When I became a chef about thirty years ago, hardly anyone understood the word ‘gastronomy’ in the Netherlands. I didn’t either. There were at most twenty Michelin stars here, it wasn’t all that special. In the whole country, only about ten thousand guests went to those kinds of restaurants at that time. Now, I think there are about a million. That’s partly due to initiatives like Lekker. Believe me: twenty-five years ago, every restaurateur was trembling in his bed the night before Lekker came out. That did something to our culture. Just like Michelin and GaultMillau had an influence on that. They caused a stir. More people started writing about good food. It was also always a certain kind of people who came to our restaurant. You could recognize them right away. Now, all kinds of people come to us: young people, old people, families… I think that’s really great.”
Picking culture
Jonnie: “Nowadays it is very normal to pick or buy things locally. It wasn’t like that in the past. Back then, the whole of the Netherlands cooked French food. Even the texts on the menus were in French. Everything had to come from France. In fact, you had to go to the Halles in Paris every week, because that’s where the best products were. I have always been very local. When I was thirteen, I was already making champagne from birch sap. We had only just taken over the business when I started potting things. I had jars of salted beans everywhere and I was already working with vinegar mother. We had our own garden, picked a lot of things wild and about twenty years ago we already had our own vegetable greenhouse. Every day I went out to pick all kinds of things in nature. Pimpernel for in the salad; pine tips to make sugars and syrups; water mint to make tea… I was one of the first to do that. Nowadays, the boys in the kitchen let me know what they need, then I put on my sneakers and go into the woods. Two months ago I had to pick bog myrtle fetch. That grows in swampy areas. I went there with the old Jeep. I got stuck. They had to pull me out with eight cooks, haha. It was really up to the axles in the mud. Another time I was also in the woods with the Jeep, together with a cook. The path we were driving on went along a meadow that had just been mown. The grass was green-yellow, millimeter-long, and in the middle there was a black cat. I say: 'That's ours!' We went full throttle into that meadow, after that cat. Suddenly the cook starts shouting: 'Chééééf, ditch!' A fraction later we were standing upright in that meadow, whole axle broken off.”
Vegetarian cuisine
Thérèse: “I eat everything, except truffle and mushrooms, but I prefer vegetarian. Purely because I like it, I'm just crazy about vegetables: lettuce, cucumber, carrots... Jonnie always tells me that I'm half rabbit, haha. In the past, if you wanted to eat something vegetarian, you were served the main course and they left out the meat. But now, vegetarian cuisine is getting so much more attention. It's great to see that chefs are doing their best to make something special out of a cauliflower. We have a lot of guests with specific dietary requirements. They are noted on a board in the kitchen. There are also a lot of people who don't dare to try certain things. When Jonnie has brought the menu and I then go to take the order, I hear: 'I've never eaten that before, I don't know if I want that.' Last week, two very nice people were here who said that they actually never eat fish. I said: 'Just try one dish. If you like that, you can have another one afterwards.' They got langoustines and they loved it. Sometimes you have to convince people. And if there is one place where you can try something, it is a restaurant like ours.”
Michelin
Jonnie: “I was in the middle of a masterclass when Thérèse called me: 'You have to come to Zwolle now, because De Telegraaf is coming. You have a Michelin star.' I drove to the restaurant at 220 km/h. It was a madhouse. We must have gone through a few bottles of champagne then.” Thérèse: “And we got a lot of flowers! I think about three hundred bunches. It was completely dark in the restaurant because we had so many flowers.” Jonnie: “A restaurant that hardly anyone had heard of, with wicker chairs, linen that often had a tear in it, no silver on the table… And that got a star? No one understood that. We were a simple restaurant, but perfect on the plate and in the service. Michelin did something about that in 1993. When we started, you could only get a star in the Netherlands if you had at least 25 people in the service, wearing black and white vests and this and that. Michelin broke through that. They started looking more at the quality of what was on the plate.” Thérèse: “And what was in the glass. When we took over De Librije, I wanted to know more about wine and that is why I did the vinologist training during my internship at the Hotel School. After that I worked my way up to wine master and later even master gastronomer.” Jonnie: “The third star had the most impact. Because then you suddenly have guests from all over the world coming to your place.” Thérèse: “That star came at a strange time. Our daughter had been admitted to hospital the day before. She had the RS virus, which causes an infection in the respiratory tract. She was very short of breath, on a drip. Such a tiny little thing, she was only four months old.” Jonnie: “Michelin inspector Paul Van Craenenbroeck came to tell us. 'Come on, I'm going to show you something…' – and he opened a book – 'trois étoiles!' I said: 'Yes, but I'm not going to drink champagne, because our daughter is in hospital.'” Thérèse: “Luckily, we were allowed to take Isabelle home later that day.”
The Librije family
Jonnie: “There are about sixty-five people working here now. Everything from the office to the dishwashers. There are always eighteen to twenty people in the kitchen. We let applicants come and work with us for a few days. We mainly pay attention to whether they like it and whether they have a good character and perseverance. They don't have to have worked at top companies. I am always calm in the kitchen. There is no need to shout or scream. I have the feeling that people perform better if you treat them well. Of the eighteen chefs, there are always about ten or eleven who stay for a long time. My chef Maik Kuijpers has been working here for twelve years now, Sidney Schutte worked here for about twelve years... And you always have about eight 'travellers', mostly foreigners. There are now chefs from Venezuela, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Austria in the kitchen. Very nice: when they make staff meals, they introduce us to what they eat at home. That German had currywurst the other day made: a big pan with lots of pieces of sausage in it with a spicy curry sauce. And that Austrian had recently brought all these käsekrainer from his country: sausages with cheese in them. Simply delicious!”
Working in the hospitality industry
Jonnie: “We have a profession that doesn’t fit into 7,6 hours a day. You work longer days, but we make sure that our employees don’t work too long, because then they perform less. Since last year, we’ve even been working one lunch less – we don’t serve them on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Consciously to keep the pressure low. Still, we sometimes get comments from the union. What I did to my staff was ‘too bad’.” Thérèse: “Those young chefs are brought up with it at school. Jimmie himself is at the Hotel School: they almost pay more attention to the collective labour agreements than to how to bake a cake. It’s very much alive in our profession.” Jonnie: “But that gives it a bad name. People think they have no life left when they start working in the hospitality industry. But with us, life is good. Maybe they sometimes work a bit longer than 7,6 hours, but that is compensated by the holidays and the days that we are closed. And not everyone wants to sit on the couch at seven in the evening with a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. Isn't it normal to continue working an hour longer if you want to master a trade? That's called investing in yourself.”
To go out for dinner
Jonnie: “Back when we just had De Librije, we would take a plane or the Thalys every now and then to go to restaurants. Just to see what everyone else was doing in the world. When we had children, we had to divide our attention differently. And then you suddenly don't care at all what others are doing. In the meantime, I was already so busy with my own style. It didn't have to be anymore, it just confused us when we went to eat somewhere else. About eighteen years ago, there was a real turning point: you know, I'm just going to do what I do myself, I thought. Of course, you sometimes see things or combinations in other kitchens that make you think 'wow, I never thought of that'. But that really happens very rarely. For the rest, eating out is something for our family. I hardly ever cook at home. Yes, during the week with things I bring from the shop. On Sundays and usually Mondays too, we almost always eat out. We have our regular addresses in Zwolle, but sometimes we also go to our kind of restaurants. On their birthdays, Jimmie and Isabelle are always allowed to come and eat with a friend. They get a table. Jimmie has been doing that since he was ten. He always brings the same buddy. When he turned fifteen, he wanted to have a beer. I wouldn't let him. He secretly got one from the staff. He was really proud. 'I had a beer!', he proudly said. 'Who gave you that?', I wanted to know. I asked the guy and it turned out that they had given him a non-alcoholic beer. He didn't even notice, hahaha!”
Jimmie & Isabelle
Thérèse: “We lived above the shop for a long time. Especially when Jimmie and Isabelle were just born, it was convenient in terms of food. Either I would walk upstairs or the children would come down in their nappies, haha.” Jonnie: “Jimmie once walked under a crowded set of dishes, with a thick nappy on his bottom, straight into the shop to the bread table, grabbed a piece of bread and walked back. Everyone was in stitches.” Thérèse: “From the birth of our son, we ate with the staff for a long time. Until Jimmie climbed on the table and kicked the plates and the staff started teaching him dirty words. Then I said: it's over now, we're just going to eat at home as a family. That's how it's stayed. We always eat at half past four, five o'clock. Then we're back at the shop at six o'clock. Two hours for the children, every day.” Jonnie: “Jimmie has been working in our kitchen since he was ten. He didn't like it for a long time. He didn't come anymore. He used to wash dishes at Bistro Bonne Femme on Fridays. He had a hard time there, you know. He had to do the dishes by himself and sometimes there were sixty people. I have respect for that. After doing that for two or three years, he suddenly knocked on our door again: 'I'm done with washing dishes now, I want to work in the kitchen now.' He helps out once, sometimes twice a week. He does it well, you know. He has chosen to go to hotel school and has already told us that he is sure he will go into the hospitality industry. But he doesn't know yet whether he wants to become a chef. Isabelle occasionally worked as a waiter on Saturdays for a few years. Now she says she finds it boring. And she asks if she can go and work in the city when she turns fourteen.”
Adventure
Jonnie: “We always plan our trips well. We prefer to divide our vacations into two: first a week on the beach, then a week of adventure. For example, we went to Panama. First we spent three days on the San Blas Islands – that is true paradise, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. From there we went to an Indian tribe in the jungle. To get there, two Indians in a boat with a stuttering outboard motor took us across a lake with dead trees. That was creepy, not normal! Then we had to walk at least ten kilometers through low tide and swim through a cave. I felt all kinds of grains in the water. When I shone my lamp up and saw thousands of bats flying over us, I knew what it was: bat poop. That did not make our children happy. And it did not help that our guide said: 'If you see red eyes, those are caimans.' They went crazy! On holiday in Suriname we also went into the jungle. At Danpaati River Lodge Jimmie was catching piranhas. He had a caiman on his hook. Such a big animal, he almost pulled it onto the beach. Where else would we like to go? To the Galapagos Islands and Costa Rica – the nature there is supposedly even more beautiful than in Panama. I always look for herbs when I am in foreign countries. At that tribe in the interior of Panama the women cooked for us – they had some kind of fat marmot on a spit. There grew a plant that looked like basil. I asked the women what they did with it. They ground it finely and smeared it behind the ears of newborn babies, so they wouldn't be kidnapped.”
To dive
Thérèse: “We don’t base our entire vacation on diving, but we do enjoy doing a few dives. Since Jonnie got his PADI in the nineties, I’ve always gone with him. I first went diving in Mexico, in 1996. Totally irresponsible: without a diving certificate, I immediately went twenty-five meters deep. The instructor said: ‘Oh man, you can do it.’ Whenever Jonnie is with me I think: it will be fine. I only got my PADI last year, together with Jimmie. This summer we are going diving in the Caribbean. We always take an instructor with us. Jonnie absolutely loves wreck diving. I have no interest in that: it just lies rusting on the bottom. I especially love the coral and the fish. All those colours under water. And how it lives and moves. Last year we came across a shark in a narrow passage between rocks. We couldn't go anywhere. Still, I didn't panic and swam straight ahead. It's such a different world under water. Just like riding a motorbike, diving is very relaxing. Normally I'm always very busy in my head - I still have to do this, do that, don't forget my sister. When I'm under water or on the motorbike, I don't think about anything at all. Although Jonnie and I share many interests - football, diving, riding a motorbike - we are very different characters. Jonnie is extrovert, I am introvert. I can hardly sit still, he can. He really has to say to me: come sit down now and we'll watch a movie. Otherwise I'll keep on doing it."
Sports
Thérèse: “Jonnie and I do muay Thai with Eddy Anthonio every Thursday morning. I also run and Jonnie rollerblades. Our personal trainer Dirk van de Worp coaches us in this. In the winter we train indoors with Dirk. We have been doing this intensively for three years now and notice that it is good for us, that it gives us a lot of energy. We do move a lot in daily life, but the movements are very one-sided: I walk from one table to the other, Jonnie spends a lot of time behind the stove. I started having problems with my lower back, Jonnie with his neck. We now do special exercises for that. At home in the attic we also have all kinds of stuff: a rowing machine, a treadmill, a bike, there is a punching bag hanging there… We often spend half an hour there in the morning. We always get up early for the kids. And I am too restless to go back to my nest.”
Hardrock
Jonnie: “I think that's beautiful music. I also always like to go to a Hardrock Café, even if it's just to buy a T-shirt or have a beer. There's a Hardrock Hotel in Panama. I remember well when we arrived there. We had been in the car for four hours from the jungle. We were covered in clay from head to toe, completely grey. All those people watching when we entered the lobby of the hotel, haha! I like all music, but I grew up with hardrock: AC/DC, Van Halen, Queen… I often have to miss concerts, because we work in the evenings. I've seen Bruce Springsteen and Prince, but that was thirty years ago. And I saw Robbie Williams in the ArenA. We can always go to the Champions Lounge, for matches and concerts.”
Football
Jonnie: “I used to play football at SV Giethoorn. I was a striker. A bit of a slow striker, but I often scored. Because of my work, I couldn't train anymore at one point. I was in the second team and had no prospect of playing in the first team. I even dropped down to the third team and one day I didn't feel like it anymore. I have always followed football. When I was dating Natasja, the current wife of René Froger, I often went to Ajax - her stepfather was the treasurer there. In the late seventies I went to every home game in De Meer. I was there when Cruijff took that penalty in combination with Jesper Olsen, when Aron Winter made his debut and the entire stadium shouted 'Arie de Winter', when Van Basten scored with that legendary bicycle kick against FC Den Bosch... What I have with Ajax, I also have with Oranje. I share that with Thérèse. If we get the chance to fly to a match of the Dutch national team, we do it. We have been to Ukraine, Portugal, everything was a bit too much behappen is. Footballers regularly come to our restaurant. Frank de Boer, Phillip Cocu, Jon Dahl Tomasson, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar… And Dirk Kuijt was here recently. Nice guy. The staff had him sign an Ajax book that I have here, haha! Mainly footballers who have played abroad come here. They have developed an affinity for wine and good food there. You could really tell from Johan Cruijff, he knew a lot about it.”
The World's Best 50 Restaurants
Jonnie: “The announcement of the 50 best restaurants in the world was always in London. That was very practical: there and back on the same day. Last year it was in New York. Then you take advantage of that to visit some nice things there. That was the same this year in Melbourne. It gives a very special feeling to be together with all the chefs. You don't see each other or hardly ever, and yet you have a bond with each other. It's great of course that we are the only Dutch restaurant on that list, at number 34. Because the flight was so long, we added a few days. For the first time, we were not at the office for a week. We were really dreading that, but we noticed that our team is so strong that they can do without us. So we could go away more often. But you have to want that... We started a restaurant to be there too. That we do this kind of thing now and then or skip school once because we want to play for the Dutch national team, yes, that happens. But out of 100 days, we are in the restaurant.”
Future
Jonnie: “We won’t continue until we drop. I’ve seen too much of that. The moment my father could start enjoying himself a bit more, he kicked the bucket. We’re not just concerned with the future of new dishes or the wine list, but also with ourselves. But we can’t say ‘we’ll stop at that point’.” Thérèse: “We can’t: we have financial obligations. Things have been going really well the last few years, but it’s not like we can stop now.” Jonnie: “If you’re smart, lucky and can keep up with the top, you can really make money in this business. But we think it’s more important to get rich in the head – through what we experience in the business, the people we get to know. That’s much more important than a million in the bank. But we do want to be able to do fun things later, when we’ve stopped.” Thérèse: “When you stop also depends on how you feel. I’m not going to walk around the business like an old woman. Besides, at some point you have to give the new generation a chance.” Jonnie: “Just like a footballer, a chef has his peak. And I can’t imagine seeing my restaurant decline. If you don’t enjoy it anymore, you have to stop. That’s also one of the reasons we started the new Librije. I’ve been looking at that building for thirty years. In the last few months I’ve sometimes thought: we have to get back up those steps. Something had to happen. In the end we decided to put that glass roof on that prison. We needed the new Librije to get motivated again. We’ve really taken a new path. The feeling, the whole experience, everything! What’s happening now is what we dreamed of.” Thérèse: “And I really wanted my own hotel, that was a wish of mine. Also to accommodate guests who come from far away. I thought: if we can do it on a plate, we can also do it in a bedroom. That way we can give them a total experience. Guests who used to come once or twice a year now come more often. They find it more relaxing, more relaxed.” Jonnie: “The difference is the difference: everything is so different. While you get the same plate. Many people say that you can put the business in the middle of New York or London: it fits there.”
