Jonathan Karpathios starts in Amsterdam

We love Jonathan Karpathios’s food. It’s no coincidence that this chef was included in FavorFlav’s Top 100 Food Influencers 2017 because of his distinctive vegetarian cooking style. Good news: you can now visit him in Amsterdam too.

FavorFlav friend Jonathan is known, among other things, for Vork & Mes in Hoofddorp and for his TV programmes and books, in which he tirelessly promotes pure, authentic food, in word and deed. Simple and effective, with an immense love of vegetables. In other words, a kind of Dutch Ottolenghi for that matter. And it is precisely that style you will find at the revamped Lokaal Eden, which managed to persuade Karpathios to create a new food concept.

De Baarsjes
Lokaal Edel, in the booming Amsterdam neighbourhood of De Baarsjes, is a familiar name in Amsterdam West. The café-restaurant, housed in a former vocational school where many creative companies are based, has been around for some time. About ten years, to be precise. And so it was time for something new.

Delicately tender whole cauliflower with fried capers and beurre noisette

Crispy egg
At the packed opening dinner, we get an early preview. The menu is derived from what we are used to at Vork & Mes, including a Karpathios classic such as the divine crispy egg—a softly cooked egg with a crispy crust of crumbled pata negra and hollandaise sauce.

The idea behind the new menu is that each table orders several dishes, which are served at the same time. So no traditional main courses, but an entire table filled with lovely little dishes to share. The menu places a great deal of emphasis on vegetable dishes, although there are also a few fish and meat dishes.

Vegetarian carpaccio
And such a table immediately looks cheerful and inviting. With burrata with avocado and marinated tomatoes; low&slow cooked, wonderfully tender whole cauliflower with fried capers and beurre noisette, white asparagus in a shellfish sauce and pointed cabbage—also served whole as a roast—with sweet-and-sour onions and hazelnuts.

The pure seasonal ingredients used come from local suppliers and the chef’s own vegetable greenhouse

Also a clever idea: the vegetarian watermelon carpaccio, which in terms of presentation is barely distinguishable from a traditional beef carpaccio. Thinly sliced watermelon that is first cooked in the oven, giving the melon a remarkably meaty texture. Wonderfully fresh, sweet flavours, combined with pine nuts and rocket.

Rhubarb
The pure seasonal ingredients used come from local suppliers and the chef’s own vegetable greenhouse—which he started years ago, long before this became common practice among chefs. Such as the rhubarb, which takes centre stage in a highly successful sweet-and-sour dessert with mascarpone, white chocolate crumble and strawberry.

Drinks and snacks
The dishes are very reasonably priced, ranging from €6.50 to €9. A nice detail: the menu includes chips from Het Friethoes. The location’s bonus is the spacious terrace—one of the loveliest hidden waterside terraces in Amsterdam West.

Lokaal Eden is also open for lunch and drinks. And for those who don’t know it yet: the beetroot ball that Karpathios—once created as an alternative to the bitterball—does not go missing from the drinks menu either.

Lokaal Edel
Postjesweg 1
Amsterdam