Do you want to be an ‘innovative’ entrepreneur at ‘De Pier’ in Scheveningen?

19-3-2015

The iconic Pier in Scheveningen (near The Hague in the Netherlands) is completely rebuilt and is still looking for some enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Innovative entrepreneurs.

The now abandoned but soon completely revamped ‘Pier’ will be opened for the public this year after a major renovation. For young and old, locals and tourists, foodies and shoppers. ‘De Pier’ is an international hotspot at sea with a wide variety of contemporary and innovative concepts. For example with food trucks and catering stands but also with art and culture, festivals, events and (pop-up) stores. The last units will be available for driven and innovative entrepreneurs.

‘De Pier’ will be one of our national prides again

‘De Pier’ is a national icon in The Netherlands and defining the picture of the coastline of Scheveningen since 1901. With a completely new meaning and after a thorough renovation. ‘De Pier’ will reopen in 2015. According to Marius van der Werff, on behalf of ‘De Pier’, the iconic Pier isn’t only saved but also “transformed into a unique center for an international and diverse audience.”

Start a business at the Pier

At the Pier there will be a diverse range of restaurants, bars, shops and much more. Existing and new entrepreneurs can indulge themselves in a world of possibilities in the field of creative and innovative concepts; from ‘haute Friture’ shops and juice bars to ‘pop up’ and experience stores. Driven and innovative entrepreneurs now have the chance to be part of the catering, retail and other concepts at the Pier. The Pier has some unique stands and spaces available for the very best concepts. Interested entrepreneurs can submit their plan through the website until April 1, 2015. Find out more about the new Pier at their website as well.

Piazza Duomo at Harrods

9-1-2015

  • Enrico Crippa

Since September 2014 , Harrods welcomes five of Italy’s best restaurants in their pop-up concept #Stelle di Stelle. This month the three-Michelin-starred restaurant ‘Piazza Duomo’ by Enrico Crippa takes the lead

Piazza Duomo

Enrico Crippa is famous among the young generation of Italian chefs. Crippa has worked with Europe’s most famous chefs like Ferran Adrià, Michel Bras en Antoine Westermann. In 2005 Crippa opened Ristorante Piazza Duomo in Alba, Italy. Piazza Duomo serves raw ingredients selected from the restaurant’s own vegetable garden that encompasses 5 acres of land.

Piazza Duomo five-course menu at Harrods will feature:

– Veal in tuna sauce
– Alta Langa potato cream with quail egg and Lapsang Souchong
– Agnolotti del Plin stuffed with three roasts, served with roast meat juices
– Fassona beef braised with Barolo and polenta
– ‘Relanghe’ hazelnut cake and cold zabaglione with Moscato wine

There will be a lunch and a dinner round each day. The menu is priced at £ 65 for lunch (a reduced version of the menu), or £ 115 for the whole menu. You can make a reservation till 31 January.

Stelle di Stelle

Stelle di Stelle works together with Identità Golose, a culinary organisation that wants to promote the traditional Italian kitchen and gastronomic delights worldwide. There has been a Stelle di Stelle at London and New York. The next edition will take place in Chicago September 2015.

Restaurant recipes from Amsterdam at Bilder & De Clercq

9-1-2015

  • Bilder en De Clercq
  • Par Hasard

The restaurant recipes and ingredients from well-known Amsterdam restaurants are soon available at Bilder & De Clercq shops. From 22 January onwards the dinner-shops at the Clercqstraat and Ceintuurbaan will sell a new signature dish from a restaurant in Amsterdam. The step-by-step recipes come with the necessary ingredients measured in the right quantity.

Participating restaurants

The first three participating restaurants are Envy, Par Hasard and Americano Bar & Kitchen. The following participating restaurants that share one of their restaurant recipes are revealed after the launch. The shop creates a brilliant crossover with the Amsterdam restaurant industry and vice versa.

About Bilder & De Clercq

Bilder & De Clercq was set up by Roger Leopold and Diederik van Gelder. Both live in Amsterdam and daily had to contend with the question “what will I have for dinner tonight?”. Finding the right dishes and ingredients was a frustrating quest that they want to end for everyone with their shop.

Inspire with restaurant recipes

At the dinner-store it’s easy to get inspiration for the right dinner with 14 different dishes available, there is always plenty of choice. The right quantities are exactly measured. Each week, three new dishes are introduced and now monthly restaurant recipes with ingredients will be available as well.

Espressobar

Next to dinner inspiration, Bilder & De Clercq sells hand-made bread and a wide variety for breakfast, lunch and drinks as well. With a few tables and an espresso bar shoppers can enjoy a cappuccino with carrot cake while having a break.

Dishes of amateur cooks on your menu

23-12-2014

  • Hobbykoks

Hotel-Restaurant Oostergoo (Grau, Friesland, The Netherlands) inspired us with their search for the tastiest meatball and ‘snert’ (a famous Dutch pea soup) to place on their lunch menu. If campaigns like is are done right, you can reach a lot of potential guests. Especially if you involve local food bloggers.

Meatballs and ‘Snert’ on the lunch menu

Restaurant Oostergoo started a competition to find the best home-made meatballs and snert. On 13 December, the meatballs and the soup were tasted by the famous Dutch chefs Joop Braakhekke and Albert Kooy to assess whether the dishes would fit in a restaurant as well. This because the winning meatball and snert will be on the lunch menu at the Hotel-Restaurant Oostergoo. The winners are Mr. Scholten de Weerd (meatballs) and Ms. Gerda Uiterwaal (pea soup).

Dishes of amateur cooks on the menu

The amount of variations of food competitions you can think of are of course numerous. But especially with the huge amount of amateur cooks and the popularity of cooking it’s not difficult to create your own theme. Enthuse the local press to pay attention to your search for a great dish, have a (local) celebrity judge the dishes and leave a spot (or a few) free at your menu. And of course, make a party from your food competition!

Robots manage restaurant

12-12-2014

A restaurant owner in China completely replaced his staff by robots.

Robots manage restaurant

Recently we wrote an article about flying robotic waiters in Singapore. The flying robotic waiters are created to help the waiters with difficult tasks. Lu Dike from China has a different mindset and lets robots serve his whole restaurant. The restaurant is located in Zheijang, a province in China. Lu Dike is convinced that it will save him a lot of money in the future. The robots are able to formulate 40 sentences which allows them to take orders from customers and transmit the orders to the kitchen. The robots have sensors that prevent them from bumping into something.

Flying robotic waiters

2-12-2014

By end-2015 autonomous flying robotic waiters will be deployed at 5 outlets of the Timbre Group in Singapore. Infinium Robotics Pte Ltd chief executive officer Woon Junyang signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Edward Chia, managing director of Timbre Group, on 31 October this year.

Prototype

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong observed an autonomous flying robotic waiter serving food during a demonstration at Singapore’s National Productivity Month 2014 Launch Event at Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Seeking productivity-related government grants

The costs are high but the flying robotic waiters could be a solution for the labour-crunch in Singapore and the robotic waiters do allow human waiters to focus on higher-value tasks such as explaining the menu, upselling and getting feedback from customers. At this moment both Infinium Robotics and the Timbre Group are seeking productivity-related government grants to help offset deployment costs.

The flying robotic waiters at work

Do you want to know more about these robots? CNBC did an interview with the owner of Infinium-Serve and had a demonstration in the studio.

Tribute to Alain Passard

28-11-2014


a video by Fine Dining Lovers

In our humble opinion a chef can’t get a better tribute! Eight chefs who have ever worked for and are inspired by Alain Passard, have jointly catered a dinner in honor of his cooking style. Initiated by Le Fooding and sponsored by San Pellegrino. ‘Alain Passard et les Arpégiens’; Björn Frantzén, Sven Chartier, Mauro Calagreco, David Toutain, Tatiana Levha, Bertrenad Grébaut, Marc Cordonnier and Ludo Lefebvre.

Reunion: Chefs tell about Alain Passard’s cooking style

Vegetables, respect for the product, watching and listening to the product, the product of this moment has the most flavor, be careful with heat and a fine balance between fat and acid. A great tribute to Alain Passard.

Great tribute

Great idea to organize a similar tribute to a Dutch chef around the presentation of a magazine or book, like the ‘Lekker’, the GaultMillau (from the Netherlands), ‘Grootspraak’ or around a special edition of Delicious.

Storytelling by Hotel Casa 400

26-11-2014

Hotel Casa 400 launches storytelling website ‘Home To 400’ and shares its history by the motto “Mi Casa es su Casa ‘.

In 1957 Gabbe Scheltema, Frits Bolkestein and the late Nol South took the initiative to introduce a successful student hotel concept from Copenhagen in Amsterdam in Copenhagen. They wanted to offer a solution to the lack of student housing and wanted to solve the increased demand for hotel rooms in the peak summer season as well.

“With us behind every room a story”

The hotel pays tribute to the founders and 57 years of history by launching a unique website with stories from students, staff and visitors of Casa 400. The accompanying video for instance tells the story of the housekeeping staff, but there are also extensive written stories about (former) residents.

Expanding the storytelling website

Besides stories that are published already the website will gradually be supplemented with stories of all students, employees and guests. It is one of the best examples of storytelling in the hospitality industry nowadays.

Coffee and Cake at the high level of Michelin

18-11-2014

  • Bouchon Bakery
  • frambozencroissant

Chefs who have been awarded with multiple Michelin stars often use their name to open ‘gastro bistro’-like restaurants. Some chefs connect their name to a bakery. For example this last year, some Fika’s (a rendezvous for coffee and pastry) opened in Stockholm. This summer I even stood in line at the Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller (two restaurants with three Michelin stars) in Yountville, California. Meanwhile, the Thomas Keller group already has five branches of the Bouchon Bakery, one with a café.

High level of Michelin at fika coffee shops

Recently I read an article in The Guardian by The Foodie Traveller who writes about the development of ‘Fika Bakeries’ in Stockholm. Some famous chefs with Michelin stars did open a bakery, where they use their talents to lift the original Fika coffee shops to a higher level in Stockholm.

The Green Rabbit bakery

The Green Rabbit bakery opened in May 2014 and is owned by Mathias Dahlgren (two Michelin stars with his restaurant Mathias Dahlgren at the Grand hotel) and his executive chef Martin Berg in Vasastan, Stockholm. They seem to include delicate blueberries and raspberries muffins in their Fika.

Wienercaféet, Lindeberg Bakery and Patisserie and Culinary Center K-märkt K-Mart

Wienercaféet is also an example of a Fika Coffeeshop. Wienercaféet opened last year by Daniel Lindeberg, who first worked with Björn Frantzén (Restaurant Frantzén, number 23 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants Pelligrino). Daniel Lindeberg left Wienercaféet already to open Lindeberg Bakery and Patisserie in another part of Stockholm. In the culinary center K-märkt Daniel Roos (world champion pastry chef in 2012) opened a bakery, with chef Johan Gottberg and sommelier Jens Dolk.

Which Dutch chef follows these examples?

Just a bakery where we can buy great sweet and savory pastries, fruit salads, cakes and specialties of the chef, possibly with a coffee-to-go. In the neighborhood of Leiden please. I’m in Stockholm late December and will take a look at the concepts and would love share my experience with chefs who do have plans in this direction! ^ Marjolein van Spronsen

Pakistani cooking class with handpicked vegetables

12-11-2014

  • Anja & Ferdinand EeuwesAnja & Ferdinand Eeuwes
  • Kookworkshop De Groene Schuur
  • Kookworkshop De Groene Schuur

Ferdinand and Anja Eeuwes grow tropical vegetables, peppers and forgotten Old-Dutch vegetables in their greenhouse for years. During the sale in their regional shop they regularly received questions about the preparation of these products. This eventually led to the creation of a series of cooking classes.

Pakistani cooking class

The cooking classes were set up eight years ago and expanded to a larger modern kitchen in 2009, surrounded by a tropical garden and herb garden. There are 16 different classes available at the moment and the next cooking class is focused on the Pakistani kitchen on 17 November.

From seed to eating

The company developed from a traditional horticultural company into a total experience from seed to food with a local shop, a plant nursery, cooking classes, excursions, educational programs, creative workshops and the hosting of children’s parties.

AEG Cooking Club

The entrepreneurs are ambassadors of AEG since 2014, people who subscribe at the AEG Cooking Club can join free cooking workshops. During these workshops consumers can get acquainted with various AEG cooking devices. The workshops are aimed on people who want to buy AEG equipment or want to learn how to optimize their own cooking skills with the AEG products they own.

The ‘Groene Schuur’ is located at the Lijkweg 9B in Groessen.

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