De Kas

De Kas Restaurant Review:

The concept is simple but exacting: raise your own boutique produce in an attached greenhouse, buy local meats from the finest purveyors, then put it all together in a five-course prix-fixe, you-get-what-we’re-serving menu (lunch €37.50, dinner €49.50). Oh, and toss in exemplary, highly sophisticated service and a serene greenhouse-warehouse interior. The setting itself is a story --- chef Gert Jan Hageman just couldn’t allow the 1926-era municipal nursery to be destroyed, so with the help of friends and the city, he set to work to make it one of the city’s most celebrated restaurants. Weather permitting, take your appetizer in the herb garden before retiring to the Piet Boon-designed dining room. Always changing, the menu may begin with house-made bread paired with caramelized chicory tartlet and a soft Dutch cheese crème, winter purslane and roasted nuts and roasted Jerusalem artichoke and cavolo nero soup. Then, perhaps, wild Beemster duck with red kale, the evening culminating in an elegant cheese plate and tiny Dutch cookies, chocolates and fruit gelées. For an extra splurge, you may dine inside the kitchen at the chef's table, available to groups of four for €125 including wine.