Culinaire verhalen

Recently I was invited for a tasting with a nice lunch for wines from Portugal in one of our nicest hotels ‘Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam’.Portugal is very exceptional because in this country there are about 250 different kind of grapes you hardly find anywhere else.

On the 19th of March a new famous chef (already very well known in London) took over the restaurant on the ground floor of the ‘MANDARIN ORIENTAL CONSERVATORIUM’ hotel in Amsterdam. Yotam Ottolenghi is his name.

For some people wine is a miracle. And perhaps it is. Wine and also spirits are in my opinion magical. As long as the quality is good. Who decides what’s a good wine or  a nice spirit? I learnt on several occasions professionaly how to taste wines and I learnt how to recognize what is

Wat maakt het begin van het nieuwe jaar interessant? Op mijn vakgebied is dat wellicht de Horecava in Amsterdam. Sinds 1957 wordt deze beurs jaarlijks gehouden. Alles wat met de Horeca te maken heef zoals, eten, drinken, design en techniek (voor o.a. in de keuken, bediening, kleine en grote horecazaken) valt er te bekijken.

Last week I got the whole article ‘Could cheese and wine help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease’ from a coworker from the University of Iowa. After reading it, I am even more confused. The researchers found out that ‘alcohol of any type daily also appear beneficial, and red wine was sometimes additionally protective’.

Champagne is mostly drunk and served by the rich and famous. There are a lot of good houses (as we call them). One of the most well-known is called Bollinger. Thanks to the movies of special agent James Bond this brand became more famous. In 1929 Joseph Jacob Placide Bollinger helped to establish the house

WineParis is the first great wine fair of the year; from the 12th to the 14th of February. But not only wine, also spirits, other kind of alcoholic beverages and non alcoholic wine’s and so called spirits where prensented on this international fair. But if you don’t know what you want to taste you’re completely

On the 10th of December I got the sad news of the death of Adrianus Anthonius Cornelis Duyves. He became 89 years of age. He was a famous entrepreneur in Amsterdam. In his early years he was a waiter in several important hotel-restaurants in Europe. He also was a waiter in the world famous restaurant

Who would think that on the hills around Paris and in Paris itself were about a 100 hectare of vineyards. That was in the time of the Romans. The Romans  were great wine growers in France and everywhere else. Now there’s only one small vineyard of 1 hectare you can visit. It’s located nearby Paris in

In the recent period of covid new restaurants opened and old ones closed their doors. Nowadays there’s another kind of crisis, a shortage of staff. Recently chef Peter Lute (about 50 years old) was asked by the Dutch furniture compagny ‘Co van der Horst’, to start a new restaurant on the 26th floor in the