From its exterior, one-star Michelin Vermeer shows a shyness, even a humility. Relatively than emblazon its title over its frontage, it appears completely joyful to let the lodge which homes it, NH Assortment’s Barbizon Palace, take the highlight on Amsterdam’s busy Prins Hendrikkade. Reverse town’s Harry Potter-esque Centraal Station. Vermeer’s lounge is colored primarily in a chic, impartial gray with partitions, flooring, sofas sometimes uplifted by brighter, bronzier highlights. Behind a waist-height counter, an array of bottles and glasses reminds that it’s a bar while on the wall reverse, a surreal black and white picture of a fish flopped elegantly right into a excessive heel reminds us to count on the sudden.
We begin the night with a Lequien et Fils champagne and are quickly served an appetiser on what seems like a black, fossilised spine. Vibrant and stacked in ever-decreasing concentric rings, the miso paste and varied radishes open the palate for what’s to return.
We go for a tasting menu with wine pairing. The menu appears barely off piste from the annotated tasting menu so retains us fortunately on the sting of our seats all through. Eager advocates of the farm-to-table motion, 99% of Vermeer’s produce is sourced from Holland and first up is an oyster from the nation’s Western tip served with fish roe infused in sherry and near frozen (however filtered) North Sea water. Chunks of asparagus are moreover served in a bowl of heat hollandaise sauce flavoured with orange butter. The tastes and temperatures of 1 pleasantly contradict these of the opposite.
Subsequent up, a few vegetarian dishes are pure, elegant, and by no means so simple as they appear. First is a fairly huddle of seasonal greens whereby yellow and mauve colors counterpoint inexperienced and cream ones. Pickled onion, white strawberry, beetroot, Brussels sprout, elderflower and cauliflower all characteristic in a couldn’t-be-more-fresh, crunchy salad unified by a cool jus that includes a playful leek jelly. With joyous yellow and inexperienced to mirror the passing of spring and the arrival of summer time, barely grilled turnips are served in a room temperature leak soup. Dannis, our genial sommelier, proffers Franz Haas Pinot Grigio for the previous and Heymann-Lowenstein Schieferterrassen, a dry Riesling, for the latter.
The eating room is intimate in measurement and retains the identical slate gray colouring as its lounge. Comfortable, proper angled sofas work with gentle picket tables for a pure, upbeat impact with glass lanterns hanging above diners. 4 black and white pictures embellish the principle wall, however much less surreal than the lounge, are extra consultant of greens as objets d’artwork. Or perhaps chef as artist. Or the entire Vermeer organism as its personal inventive hub, or, certainly, micro artwork motion. Perhaps the clue is within the restaurant’s title, Vermeer; the Dutch grasp recognized for his tender, pure lighting, his intricate element. We’re eating on an particularly shiny night and because the solar slowly units, the eating room turns into its personal dramatic artwork piece, a bit like a functioning James Turrell. Shadows seem, shadows elongate, shadows disappear. Golden hues come, golden hues go. It’s an extra, immersive side of the restaurant and, wittingly or not, displays its respect for and bond with nature.
The hen pie is impressed by a candy dessert however might, by look alone, equally be impressed by a Cornish pasty or perhaps a Beef Wellington. The inverse form of a bowl, the pie is reduce in half on the desk and moistened with hen jus. As is more and more the norm lately, each a part of the poultry is used within the pie, even the liver. The pastry is tremendous gentle and a small quantity of salt (which most dishes lack) has been added to the rind. That is essentially the most aromatic dish to this point and a barn-storming hen flavour bursts from each scrumptious mouthful.
Pear kombucha cleanses our palate for the night’s predominant course. Six totally different components of lamb encompass a small pool of lamb jus which chef Sebastian Baquero Garces pours. The lamb is dry aged for per week, he explains, and we’re to eat it in an anti-clockwise order. There’s kidney, saddle, neck and shoulders and rib. There’s hemp seed someplace, a half-penny-sized jalapeño dip and a few slippery mustard seeds. The kidney is surprisingly peppery. The ultimate cutlet gives essentially the most conventional, purest of style which reminds of when the world was easier, all lamb was natural and tasted like 1,000,000 {dollars}. It’s accompanied by a full-bodied and beautiful Chateau Carbonnieux Grand Cru Classee de Graves 2014.
A champagne sorbet with Imperial caviar acts as a last palate cleanser earlier than the same idea to the lamb dish is served for dessert. There’s poached rhubarb, rhubarb ice cream adorned in a floral twirl, rhubarb jus infused with Thai basil and there are two lengthy, skinny creations which appear to be lobster leg meat however are rhubarb candy sticks. Nature has develop into its personal dimmer change and Vermeer is far darker and moodier in ambiance.
Dannis gives us freshly reduce strawberries, chunks of watermelon and a pleasant tartelette as a departing gesture. Housed in nice pastry, the latter is surprisingly tender and gooey and is fabricated from a 70% darkish chocolate from Ecuador (perhaps the 1% of the menu not derived domestically and a touch at our chef’s South American heritage?). Simply as we’re readying to depart, Dannis invitations us into the kitchen the place the workforce look remarkably fresh-faced, nonetheless, and upbeat.
Sebastian Baquero Garces is an amiable chap and a straightforward raconteur. He exhibits us the storage room, the dry ageing chamber, explains in additional element in regards to the lamb dish and regales how a lot he loved his two years beforehand working as private chef to a Dutch ambassador. It’s a particular method to finish a particular night in a particular restaurant.
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