About Me

I am a person that enjoys preserving the spirit of traditional and sometimes ancient cuisine. I also believe in keeping the ritual of cooking alive. One needs to revive the old by adding their personality to the process. I believe originality comes from intuition and base much of my cooking on this concept.

Having worked in the restaurant industry for over 15 years, I now, as a private chef, could describe myself as that small hidden restaurant far off the main road that can usually be discovered more by word of mouth.

My preferred approach is to have no set menus and like to communicate with each guest about what their wishes are and build my menu on their request but considering to leave a 20-30% flexibility window for the final choice of ingredients based upon freshness and Availability on the market on the day itself.

In general, I like to source my ingredients as local and organic as possible to guarantee the best result while helping sustain the environment and heritage of the product.

Italian cuisine comes most naturally to me as I have worked and lived for two years in Tuscany, learning the trade, followed by seven years working in the Italian restaurant Toscanini Amsterdam. Now, whilst Tuscany and Toscanini might sound like sharing common roots, Tuscany, as we all know, is a region in Italy, while the restaurant Toscanini was named after an Italian conductor from the late 19 and early 20th centuries. That being said, these two represent to me very rustic forms of Italian kitchen.

I’m reminded of a soup called Ribollita, a dish traditionally made of yesterday’s vegetable soup cooked again with bread to give it more substance and creaminess. It doesn’t quite have that visual spark to the dish, but it definitely makes up for it in flavour. Toscanini was generally known for its traditional home cooking, also known as “Cucina casareccia”, which literally translates as Homely kitchen. So I would say my style of Italian cooking is very rustic, traditionally based and very homely.

Now if looking at my genetic roots and bloodline, there are Dutch, Egyptian, and greek genes in the mix. It’s not what I have been raised with when we talk about upbringing in culture or cuisine, but I feel deep down a connection when cooking with the flavours from those parts of the world—particularly northern Africa but also very much the middle east. I love coriander, cumin, turmeric and other spices from those parts of the world. I also love how they embrace vegetables and, of course, hummus and baba ganoush with freshly baked pitas to accompany all of it.

On the other hand, Greek is an underrated cuisine if you ask me. But without getting too much into that, I love Tzatziki, crispy fried filo dough filled with feta, spinach and dill. Or think of stuffed aubergines served with lemon and oregano roast potatoes as a main. Simply delicious!!

My professional background has been cooking with mainly Mediterranean influences and french schooling as a foundation. But being born and raised most of my life in the Netherlands and Indonesia being the largest former Dutch colony, The flavours and cuisine have more or less been embraced as Dutch cuisine. The flavours have always fascinated me, and I have been adding those influences to my kitchen over the years.

I also travelled back and forth to India many times and think this is one of the greatest cuisines where the absence of meat or fish can easily go unnoticed by even the biggest carnivores or pescetarians. For this reason, I love to cook with Indian spices and flavours at home and embrace this cuisine into my professional services as a chef.