Bas van Kranen loves vegetables. So much so that since the launch of Flore in Amsterdam in 2021, the menu at the two-star restaurant has been on display with a dish that includes over 25 herbs, vegetables and flowers. Some are cooked, some are raw, some are pickled, and seasonally varied. The vibrant plate emphasizes Van Kranen’s love for produce, an obsession he grew up in Maasbracht.
“I really like eating vegetables,” the Dutch chef told the observer sitting in Florre’s private restaurant. On the one hand, one of Amsterdam’s canals filled with passing tourist boats and on the other hand, the original kitchen, the team is preparing for today’s lunch service. He admits he likes seafood and meat, but that’s not what he inspired.
Van Kranen spent a lot of time learning about food sources during the pandemic, which shapes his cooking.
“I know there is a difference between vegetables and vegetables,” he explained. “Previously, we worked with various vegetables and we didn’t know where they came from. They grew chemicals. They grew in volume and speed.”
Flore now works specifically with organic products from Dutch farms. “They will grow cautiously and have the taste of time,” Van Kranen noted. “So, they become more interesting to me. I realize that cooking delicious food with vegetables is very underestimated.”
In his previous life, Flore was a high-end French restaurant called the restaurant Bord’eau. Bord’eau is part of the luxury hotel De L’Ourope, a successful premium dining venue, Michelin star and a decade of service when Van Kranen was hired as its chef in 2018. He kept the restaurant tradition until the 2020 pandemic shut down everything. Because he is not popular, he is not popular, Van Kranen wants to use his time wisely. He and his team began to study ingredients extensively, including producers, soil, fertilizers, and climate, to understand how they affect food.
“We wanted to know everything about our ingredients, and from there, the project got bigger,” he said. “I thought about why we were using something specific. Why did we take pigeons from France when we had good alternatives nearby? I also started thinking about what luxury is – luxury about lobster, pigeons and wuniu beef? Or is it more about luxury to give people a personal experience and create an individual around our kitchen?”
This revelation encouraged Van Kranen to suggest closing Bord’eau despite its history and praise. European owners were initially and understandably, but chefs think it is the best way to start. “I can’t express myself,” he admitted. “What I do in the kitchen and the brand of the restaurant are fighting each other. I don’t want to incorporate myself into someone else’s concept, but I want to do things that are close to me.”
Flore debuted in September 2021, showing a pre-plant menu highlighting Van Kranen’s emerging interest in purposeful ingredients. Nine months later, the restaurant was awarded two Michelin stars and Michelin Green stars. “It was a big surprise for us,” the chef smiled. “The way we cooked at the time was not something that Michelin made a lot of sense at the time. It was a popular topic, but we were opening a new door.”
Earlier this year, Flore rebooted again, this time a new interior design that emphasizes its connection to nature – the concave tones of curved ceilings, textured walls and signs. A convincing addition to what Van Kranen calls a “seasonal studio” is all the ingredients used in the kitchen every day. Guests are invited to their first dish, a vegetable soup filled with leaf cups. The team described the ingredients for the day and offered a choice between the meat-friendly merchandise tasting menu and the whole plant menu.
“I’m not the kind of chef who tries to teach you something on the side of the table,” Van Kranen said. “I want my guests to have a great evening or a great lunch. Taking you into the seasonal studio, breaking the ice and giving you a sense of what’s going to happen.”
During the mid-May visit, the ingredients displayed include white asparagus, elderly lamb, elderflower, crayfish, yellow zucchini and artichokes. Currently, more than 90% of the products used in Flore are from the Netherlands. The other 10% include nuts, spirits and spices, which are more difficult to source locally.
“I don’t necessarily feel like it’s best to use something nearby,” Van Kranen noted. “But it’s important for me to be aware of the people who are foraging or growing up. By connecting with these people, we can focus on this season.”
Flore works with 15 different farms. Many are farther away in rural areas, but some are located in the outskirts of Amsterdam. The meat and fish are also from the Netherlands, which is why Van Kranen incorporates crayfish into exquisite dishes with strawberries and rich sauces instead of the typical lobster. This focus is that what is sourcing from the chef’s own country is indeed what defines Florey’s food.
“It’s Dutch food because we work with artisans who grow food, harvest food and fish food in the Netherlands,” he confirmed. “I’m not sure if the Netherlands has a high reputation as a food culture itself, because there’s a lot of culture in this country. If I look at the food I’ve grown up, there’s not enough inspiring dishes to put on my menu. It’s not something natural in our culture. But the food in our culture is Dutch.”
Van Kranen continues to research these ingredients, including products commonly used in Michelin-starred kitchens. Currently, he is curious about the sting fish, a medium-sized white fish from the nearby North Sea. He brought a man to the table as we spoke. The fish has undoubtedly been cut off, it has been dried by butterflies for over a week. Every day, Van Kranen cut off a small portion of the fillets to check its progress. It wasn’t ready for service, but he was close.
“I do have how to prepare,” he said. “A little bit like what the Japanese do with unagi because the fish has a very good tension and the meat has a very meaty texture. I’m still busy experimenting with it. It’s very important for me to be driven by curiosity and discovery.”
Past experiments have produced a current dessert, an ice cream that is suffocated by sugared seaweed and salted caviar. Finding a balance of sweetness and texture in seaweed has gone through a lot of trial and error. It took several hours of research. “When I get into a topic, I really try to explore a lot of different techniques,” he said. “Like we want to work on kimchi, we don’t try five kimchi. I try 15 different pickling techniques on one vegetable and then choose favorites.”
Van Kranen has been facing challenges. After Flore opened for a year, he decided that the restaurant would stop repeating dishes. The seasonal menu changes twice a year, but many dishes are changed weekly based on the available dishes. Specific menu items, including 25 vegetable boards, will never be repeated as before.
“It’s very progressive and very intense,” Van Kranen said. “But all this work is what makes it fun. Repeat the creative plot of dishes. I do try to forget everything I learned before [Flore] This way I can use the new color palette. ”
The restaurant’s non-alcoholic pairing is something the chef invests in from the beginning. He likes to convince diners to try new things with wine and non-alcoholic choices. “For me, it’s not a big deal to push the front of the House team to understand, it’s not about choosing a good wine and selling a good wine,” Van Kranen said. “It’s about understanding what it takes to pair dishes and drinks. I want to break tradition there.”
Non-alcoholic pairing is as complicated as the food itself. The team uses fermentation techniques and smoking to bring out some flavors, and of course, agricultural products are at the forefront. The dessert is accompanied by the plant Jerusalem artichokes and Thangka bean sauce, which includes the aforementioned wakame dishes and small breads filled with mushrooms. Blueberry and juniper berry juice is the smoke table for Arctic charcoal course. “When we change the dish, we change the juice,” Van Kranen said. “So I can’t just say, ‘This dish is ready, let’s put it on it tomorrow.’ We have to develop the pairing first.”
Since Flore opened, Van Kranen has pursued excellence in both restaurants and at home. He joked that you should “see me making salad for dinner” because everything he did was so precise. Although he admired Flore’s Michelin stars, he made them early on. He said praise encourages you to think about what others want or expect, which is not the chef he wants to be. Now, considering external perception, he has “completely stopped.”
“I thought, ‘I’m going to do something I think is good, and it’s for us,'” Van Kranen said. “For me, it’s always a negative association with the label – it can help to some extent, but it also does affect finding your personality. Finding your personality can be hard, but it’s very important to try to stick to what you like. When I created Flore, when I created Flore, my goal was to forget everything I did before and do my success the way I liked.
