Five times a year, Chef Joram Timmerman changes his entire menu. It's quite a task, but you get used to it. Meanwhile, after running the same menu for a few months, the team genuinely looks forward to it. An interview with the chef from Kook Atelier about inspiration, his favorite dish, and how nature finds its way onto your plate.
"At a certain point, you want to create something new again," says Joram. "Otherwise, you keep playing the same record over and over. You really feel the need to do something different again."
For Joram, creating new dishes is mainly a natural process that stems from his drive for innovation and challenge. The entire brigade is constantly searching for new flavors and combinations, and the dynamic of continually adjusting the menu keeps everyone sharp and inspired.
"After a while, you master the trick, then it's time to challenge yourself again," says the chef of Kook Atelier. "At the beginning of the menu, you have to focus and concentrate a lot. Initially, the team is busy getting the 15-flavor menu on track. Once that's settled, it creates space to think about other things again."
Joram has been in the kitchen for over 30 years, having been introduced to the craft by his father from a young age. One of the most important sources of inspiration for Joram has been nature itself for many years. The chef believes that nature has already created all the beauty, and it is his task to make it even more delicious.
Joram: "I think most inspiration comes from nature itself; in the kitchen, we just need to translate it onto a plate." He emphasizes the importance of experimenting a lot and "seeing, smelling, and tasting." It’s no surprise that the surprise menu has been called 'Served by Nature' for years.
Apart from nature, which is always a clear source of inspiration, the 'how' of inspiration is something the chef finds hard to pinpoint: "Sometimes I force myself to work on the new menu, and nothing comes out of it. And then suddenly, within an hour, you have a new menu on paper. Where it comes from, I have no idea. Inspiration comes and goes. Over the years, you get better at recognizing it."
Meanwhile, as we write this in early May, nature is about to explode. "Especially if you look at our Waelde Garden, our own orchard," says Joram. If there is anything inspiring, it is that place, where according to him, "everything wants to grow" at this moment.
Now about the menu itself. This menu does not include any meat dishes. “We always source our meat from our own island, but we have a few rules before incorporating any meat, often lamb, into the menu. For example, a lamb must have grazed for at least 100 days; otherwise, we consider it ethically irresponsible to serve lamb.” The “lambing season” has just finished, so it’s not quite time for that yet.
The chef explains that it’s currently a challenging season for vegetables. Everything is sprouting, but it still needs to grow. The winter vegetables are at their end, and the real summer vegetables have yet to arrive. “We use a lot of herbs and vegetables that have been pickled, salted, fermented, or preserved in vinegar.”
Joram enthusiastically talks about the herbs from the garden of their neighbor across the street in Oost. One of the stars of the new menu is wild garlic. Joram: "Thanks to our neighbor, we can add wild garlic to our dishes all year round." The team picks the herbs together, often enough for an entire year. Sustainability and local sourcing remain central: "This way, we leave the rest of nature undisturbed."
Meanwhile, the team adjusts the menu as the season progresses. Joram emphasizes the limited availability of ingredients, such as asparagus, which were also very short in supply this year due to the cold spring. Timmerman: "We regularly change the vegetables in a menu."
One dish that we’ve seen more often but is always ‘just a bit different’ is Joram’s ‘Ode to Spring’: “Various pickled and fermented vegetables, with a cream made from Texel sheep’s cheese. The preparation method is fixed, but the vegetables can vary with the season. It depends on what is available and in stock.”
Joram reveals a bit about one of the 15 dishes, an appetizer with white chocolate balls filled with an explosion of spring herbs from their own garden. He says: “These flavor bombs are completely liquid inside. The combination with ginger and spring onion makes it a surprising and spicy start to the dinner.”
The chef of Kook Atelier can’t name a favorite dish from this menu; he is proud of what the team has managed to create again. “Even when we ask guests about their favorite dish from this menu, we get very different responses, and that makes me proud.”
When pressed, he is willing to name a personal favorite: the asparagus with a hollandaise sauce made from smoked butter, served with a glass of fermented asparagus. Timmerman describes in detail how the dish combines sweet asparagus with a rich sauce on one side of the plate and a fresh, tangy foam on the other. Smiling, he says, "And when you eat it together... bite by bite... it's really a fantastic dish."
Want to experience the new menu yourself? Reserve a table at the Kook Atelier restaurant. And don’t wait too long, because before you know it, his team will be updating the menu once again.