Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.

"Don't copy, but innovate"

In corona time, Bas van Kranen reinvented himself as a chef, resulting in a complete transition of his restaurant. Only natural ingredients, clouds on the ceiling and even a new name. From day one, Flore was full and already in its first year it was rewarded with two Michelin stars and a Green Star. "Everything that Bord'Eau was, we are no longer. Only the place is still the same."
Esther Quelle

A lot of water has flowed through the Amstel since I interviewed Bas van Kranen in 2018. After gaining experience in mainly Limburg kitchens, including Da Vinci and De Leuf, he became chef of Bord'Eau that year. The restaurant located in De L'Europe had been cooked to two stars by Richard van Oostenbrugge in the previous years. Bas started from scratch again. Now, four years later, the restaurant has undergone a complete metamorphosis: interior, kitchen, name, philosophy ... everything! That the right course had been chosen was underlined by Michelin on May 30: Flore was awarded two regular and a Green Star all at once. At a table in the restaurant, Bas shares his success story from behind a coffee. "The reason I came to Amsterdam in 2018 was to compete more with the top level: you have many talented chefs here within a two-, three-hundred-meter radius. That competition encourages me to make the most of myself. I've been everywhere. To see what's going on in Amsterdam, what everyone is doing and, above all, what I shouldn't be doing. Fine dining in the Netherlands in general is quite a copycat culture. We all cook a five- or six-course menu; everywhere you get scallops, langoustines, pigeon, Wagyu, caviar, sea bass; everyone follows the same techniques... At the time of corona I asked myself the question: who is Bas van Kranen? To that end, I started talking to a lot of people. I came to the conclusion that I was actually doing a collecting mix of everything I have learned from all kinds of chefs over the past fifteen years. I asked myself the question: do I want to keep cooking this way or am I going to reinvent myself?"

Development

Bas chose the latter and put the focus on development. "If you copy something, you are identically copying a dish. But if you apply a technique in your own way with your own ingredients and maybe a different binding, then you are innovative. But that, of course, is the trickiest path. In the beginning at Bord'Eau, I was not nearly as innovative and had less individuality. That also had to do with the fact that the name and concept of the restaurant were already there. Everything was about luxury products from all over the world. That's what Bord'Eau has always been. A very international restaurant with almost exclusively international guests. And they also expected Wagyu, lots of caviar and truffles. That was the pigeonhole into which I saw myself placed: this is what you have to cook. The pandemic gave me the opportunity to break out of that box. It was a time of reflection: what are we really doing? Right from the first week we were closed we started projects in research into the food industry, dairy, fishing techniques, how large and small farms work, emissions in the meat industry, the difference between rationally and biodynamically grown vegetables... We also started picking in the wild. What does the Dutch landscape have to offer? Dewberry, rose hip, angelica... We learned a lot from all those studies, and I was also quite shocked by the outcome. Flore was not born out of a greenwashing program or sustainability initiative, Flore was really born out of research. And eventually that led to a certain individuality, where we expressed a preference for Dutch products that were grown or cultivated properly. Fine dining became conscious fine dining. How big is our contribution to sustainability right now? We are making very good strides, but we are far from achieving it. That's why we're focusing on awareness: thinking about what you're doing, why you're doing something and where you're getting the ingredients from. Instead of placing an order for twenty kilos of turbot, you can ask the fisherman: what is at the auction now, where does it come from, how is it caught, when is the roe season?"

 

 

Challenge

Because of the method of production, the cow's life and the emissions, Bas decided to stop using dairy products in cooking completely. "Look at Asian culture, how little dairy products they use there and how pure that cuisine is. Say I grill a piece of turbot with a gelatin from the fin and finish it with a gravy from the head. That's very natural, pure fish what you taste. Or I add a thick beurre blanc. Then I mask the fish and the butter, the fat dominates. Without dairy it's much more complicated, because then it's purely about the taste of the fish. I don't make it as easy for myself and my kitchen, but the challenge makes you more creative. Not copying, but innovating. In a natural way we went deeper and deeper into that. Because of overfishing, we no longer work with langoustines, scallops, turbot, red mullet ... Actually, we stopped using the whole line of popular ingredients for fine dining. But that still leaves so much fish. Think pikeperch, plaice, mussels, crayfish, cuttlefish. Anything from the North Sea or rivers. I called my fishmonger and asked if he had eel. That's an eel-like fish with a deep green bone, caught in the Oosterschelde and IJsselmeer. A fantastic fish! But hardly anyone knows the geep anymore. Even my fishmonger said, "Bas, in the twenty-five years I've been in the business, no chef has ever asked me for this fish. While it just swims around in the Netherlands and is super tasty. But it is not the standard in fine dining. Our geep wins over the turbot. One hundred percent. Why? In all 120 starred restaurants in the Netherlands you will find the perfectly cooked turbot. But what's exciting about it? You can find turbot everywhere, geep is not. With that we surprise the customer."

MASTERS MAGAZINE

Want to read the rest of this article? The winter issue of MASTERS was created in collaboration with Jordi van den Bussche. Many will know him as YouTuber Kwebbelkop, yet he has been working hard as an entrepreneur for some time, as he reveals in the Big Interview. What's new is that his company JVDB Studios is offering to do social media marketing and short-format content marketing for other companies. "They can also go and figure it out themselves, but we cracked the code." Jordi gives a stage to like-minded entrepreneurs such as Jay-Jay Boske, Demy de Zeeuw, Chahid Charrak and Marcella de Bie, and discusses developments around games, crypto and NFT: "Just as bitcoin turned the financial system upside down, the same will happen with gaming." This extra-thick winter issue also features Lengers' first own ship, an interview with Corendon chief Atilay Uslu, specials on the new BMW 7 Series and Samsung foldables, and - exclusively for MASTERS! - an interview with Max Verstappen.

MASTERS #52 with guest editor Jordi van den Bussche