Last weekend I’ve been to Chateau Wittem in the Netherlands to eat at “Julemont”. Chef Guido Braeken received two stars on the spot in 2022 – that somehow went unnoticed at that time, which surprised me.
Located in a *beautiful* castle, the cuisine is very french with some Japanese accents here and there. Also, it’s strongly based on fish and seafood.
It was a very good dinner in which the John Dory clearly was the benchmark; the dashi was flavoured with eel skin and bones and had a delicate smokey flavour to it. Both this dish as well as the turbot (a fish I’d *love* to see more on fine dining menus these days) was clearly three stars.
Everything else was also made with a lot of attention to detail, especially with regards to cooking points, temperature, proportions and texture. A lot of the dishes contained some element of sweetness which was mostly balanced out by acidity – only here and there I thought it might be good give the palates one or two points of spicy (in the sense of “spices”) surprise during the dynamics of the menu, but that’s clearly not something I’d make a big fuzz about.
I’m really eager to see where the chef and the team is heading within the next couple of years. Very promising!
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Last weekend I’ve been to Chateau Wittem in the Netherlands to eat at “Julemont”. Chef Guido Braeken received two stars on the spot in 2022 – that somehow went unnoticed at that time, which surprised me.
Located in a *beautiful* castle, the cuisine is very french with some Japanese accents here and there. Also, it’s strongly based on fish and seafood.
It was a very good dinner in which the John Dory clearly was the benchmark; the dashi was flavoured with eel skin and bones and had a delicate smokey flavour to it. Both this dish as well as the turbot (a fish I’d *love* to see more on fine dining menus these days) was clearly three stars.
Everything else was also made with a lot of attention to detail, especially with regards to cooking points, temperature, proportions and texture. A lot of the dishes contained some element of sweetness which was mostly balanced out by acidity – only here and there I thought it might be good give the palates one or two points of spicy (in the sense of “spices”) surprise during the dynamics of the menu, but that’s clearly not something I’d make a big fuzz about.
I’m really eager to see where the chef and the team is heading within the next couple of years. Very promising!
Thank you for sharing. Looks amazing.