Review of Vermeer restaurant: bizarre that they no longer have a star

Last year, Restaurant Vermeer lost its star, but we discovered just how undeserved that is. Because this place doesn’t just serve incredible (!) food—the entire setting is sublime, from the atmosphere to the staff. The restaurant is spacious, the service is wonderfully cheerful, and the jovial maître Bjorn van Aalst makes the evening complete.

Loss of the star

Restaurant Vermeer (opened in 1988) held one Michelin star from 2005 through 2007 and from 2011 to 2022. Last year, Vermeer lost it. Chef Chris Naylor, who has been in Vermeer’s kitchen since 2004, called the loss of the star ‘a shock’. What the precise reason is? No clue, according to the British chef. ‘Michelin provides no feedback when a restaurant loses a star,’ he told hospitality trade magazine Misset Horeca. He said he would do everything he could to cook the star back. And honestly: if they don’t get it back this year, I’ll eat my hat. Because Vermeer is good—very, very good.

Lovely: a clear menu

Chris cooks with seasonal produce, and you can choose from a 4-course (€85), 5-course (€100) or 6-course menu (€115). The menu is anything but standard, but contains only keywords, such as: Cabbage – Skrei, Jerusalem Artichoke – Sesame, Beans – Truffle. Some people get a massive error message from that, but don’t stress: at the table, the dishes are explained in detail.

The wine list is also striking; its first two pages are nicely and clearly divided into Refreshing, Quirky, Crazy Winemakers and Icons-wines. A list of classics follows for connoisseurs and/or wine snobs. And then there’s a hefty book with even more wines. Plenty of choice! An extra nice touch: they love serving magnums and larger bottles. So don’t be surprised if Vermeer’s cheerful sommelier Fallon Hoog Antink pours your Riesling from a three-litre bottle.

Amuses from the vegetable chef of the year

You can begin the evening in the cosy lounge, where cocktails and matching bar bites are being experimented with extensively. We go straight to the table and are enthusiastically greeted by Bjorn. Bubbles? Why not? He pours us a rich champagne made from pinot meunier and pinot noir, because it’s winter and everything can be a little richer and fuller then, according to Bjorn. And an extra plus: the champagne also pairs perfectly with Chris’s amuses.

Chris was once named ‘Vegetable Chef of the Year 2019’, and what he does with vegetables is truly awesome, as is immediately clear from the first amuse. ‘Eat with your fingers,’ says the chef cheerfully as he comes to the table with a small cauliflower tartelette. The bite, which also contains parsley and capers, is bursting with flavour.

The second amuse, little gem lettuce with jalapeño ice cream, is also a bull’s-eye. The cold ice cream explodes in our mouths.

The relaxed atmosphere at Vermeer is striking. Although everything runs incredibly smoothly, with plates served simultaneously and glasses refilled exactly on time, there is plenty of laughter among the staff and with the guests. And how lovely: a plant is taking root and growing on the table; hydroponics is definitely hot in 2023.

Six courses of pure delight

We go all out with the six-course menu. Every dish excels in colour, originality, flavour, balance and refreshing lightness. The dishes of red beet tartare are particularly beautiful, one with oyster and the other with potato and chives.

The skrei with barbecued pointed cabbage, salmon roe, fried sea lettuce and beurre blanc is also fantastic. Alongside the beurre blanc, the dish comes with an anchovy mayonnaise sauce; we ask for extra bread to dip into it all. Afterwards, carrot broth is served in a small bowl to drink in one go. There’s a small kimchi ravioli in it. Spicy, exciting, original and once again incredibly tasty.

Taleggio to die for

We move effortlessly on to the main courses: roast duck with carrot and ‘five spice jus’, and a vegetarian dish of sauerkraut with fried Brussels sprout leaf, caramel and Taleggio, a super-creamy square cheese with an orange rind from northern Italy that melts beautifully. We love stirring it through risotto, or making a pantosti with it, but we’ve never eaten a more delicious Taleggio dish than this one. The sourness of the sauerkraut, the creaminess of the Taleggio, the crispy, slightly bitter fried Brussels sprout leaf and the sweetness of the caramel: this is an incredible dish.

Nothing but praise for the duck, either: perfectly cooked, tender and juicy, with a fantastic jus. Here too, we wipe our entire plates clean with bread—we don’t want to miss this round of fare la scarpetta!

Two desserts

Dessert consists of two parts: a pre-dessert of chicory with apple and vanilla ice cream, followed by a sesame cake with Jerusalem artichoke and coffee-kombucha ice cream. Notably, these are savoury desserts with a hint of sweetness. And that too is very much on trend; vegetables work really well in desserts, and more and more chefs are discovering this. Vegetables often contain more sugars than fruit, and as a vegetable chef—what Chris is through and through—it naturally makes perfect sense for him to give vegetables some time in the spotlight in the final course as well. An added advantage: it isn’t as heavy a finish as a regular dessert.

The music is good too

Finally, there is an incredibly enjoyable musical backdrop. A building playlist has been put together based on the dishes and the progression of the evening. The evening starts mellow and ends as if you’re in a club. A club you’ll be very happy to return to.