Dining in the Park

We hadn’t heard anything from culinary wunderkind Marco Westmaas for a while, once the owner-chef of the Netherlands’ first star-worthy beach club: Elzenduin Beach in Ter Heijde aan zee. But now he’s back. To celebrate, he’s inviting ten international chefs to cook twenty stars into the sky alongside him at his new home, Leersumse Parc Broekhuizen.

Westmaas was always the odd one out among the Dutch chefs, with a vision that reached far beyond the borders of his own kitchen or country. For example, the chef helped develop meat substitutes based on lupin flour and introduced the rare Indonesian jet-black chicken to the Netherlands.

Asia
Westmaas owes that broad outlook to his enormous appetite for travel, which took him back to his beloved Asia several times over the past five years, where he launched various restaurant concepts.

Culinary wunderkind Marco Westmaas is back.

But now he’s back. This time not on the North Sea, but at Parc Broekhuizen, the former national institute for nature management in Leersum, Utrecht. Once again, he didn’t choose a metropolitan setting to introduce his ‘progressive gastronomic concept’—a modern world cuisine full of seasonal produce and local ingredients.

Revolutionary
If that doesn’t sound immediately revolutionary, rest assured that in Westmaas’ hands, it will be. Starting this coming weekend. His arrival at Parc Broekhuizen, which opened at the end of last year and boasts 22 luxury suites and Westmaas’ restaurant Voltaire, will be celebrated with an international star-studded cast inaugurating the kitchen over four days under the title Dinner at the Parc.

Ten chefs and twenty Michelin stars at a kitchen party.

Think Heinz Beck ( ***La Pergola, Rome), Paolo Casagrande (***Lasarte, Barcelona), Sven ElverFeld (***Aqua, Wolfsburg), Ian Kittichai (Issaya, Bangkok) and Jannis Brevet (**Inter Scaldes, Kruiningen). Ten chefs and twenty Michelin stars in total.

Kitchen party
They’ll cook together, taste champagne and wine , and on Monday evening there will be a kitchen party with all the chefs.
In short, the perfect opportunity to fill your international culinary dance card.

Can’t make it this coming weekend? In June, Dinner at The Parc will focus on wagyu and sake. The Japanese ***chef Hiroyuki Kanda will work with two masters on the famous meat, while a mixologist shakes sake cocktails and stirs Japanese whiskies.

Dinner at the Parc
10 to 13 March 2017
Parc Broekhuizen, Leersum