A taste for innovation
Telegraph Visit Flanders supplement
Published on Saturday March 8, 2008
In Antwerp, good food and hard work mean exceptional quality, explains Chris Alden.
Imagine, for a moment, that you run two successful restaurants in one of Europe’s most fashionable and laid-back cities. One of your restaurants has a Michelin star; the other, a bistro, is packed with professionals eating fresh fish five nights a week. The city, you might say, is your oyster. What’s your next move?
For Julien Burlat and Sophie Verbeke, the husband-and-wife team who run Michelin-starred Dôme and its sister restaurant Dôme Sur Mer in Antwerp, the answer was an unusual one.
They opened a bakery next door.
On one level, it seems a bizarre decision. Few restaurateurs would have the time or confidence to branch out into bread-making – especially as the average baker gets up in the morning only a few hours after the average chef goes to bed.
But for Julien and Sophie, it was not only a chance to ensure that there was always great bread on their customers’ plates; it was a chance to put down roots in their neighbourhood.
“People can’t all [afford to] come here,” says chef Julien, as we sit under the eponymous dome in his main restaurant, where the taster menu will set you back €89 with wine, or €65 without. “But they can buy bread.”
The name of the bakery, which they started just six months ago, fits perfectly with the homely, welcoming image the couple are trying to project. They have called it Domestic.
The whole concept – elegant restaurant, swish bistro and charming bakery, all within 50 yards of each other – tells you more than a thing or two about Antwerp, a city of winding alleys and back-street gems, where even the high-class eateries are utterly down-to-earth.
Eating at Dome, which opened just five years ago, is half like going to a top restaurant, half like being treated to dinner at somebody’s house. As I eat my velouté of Jerusalem artichokes with smoked duck breast and black truffle – the last of which explodes with flavour in my mouth – at the next table a professional couple are taking their two young daughters out to celebrate a birthday.
“Each dish I make, I want to eat,” explains Julien, a Frenchman who worked under Alain Ducasse in Paris, and says his philosophy is to use fresh produce, with everything à la minute, and deliveries from all over France.
He lives above the restaurant, a mile or so south-east of the city centre, with Sophie, a Belgian, who handles the front-of-house – and who once worked in Antwerp’s fashion business for designer Dries van Noten.
“Antwerp is a big small town,” says Sophie. “It has the strengths of a big city with shops, museums, and things to do – but it’s small-scale, so people know what’s going on immediately.”
In a similar way, Dome is a big small restaurant. “It’s quiet, it’s not in the centre, it’s private. You treat the customer like a friend,” says Julien.
Across town at De Colvenier restaurant, where owner-chef Patrick van Herck has worked for 18 years, there is a similar philosophy. Though his winter garden and 19th-century dining room are much more opulent in style than modern Dome, and the cooking less modern and more classic, Patrick too lives above his restaurant – and the place is very much as an extension of himself.
“Everyone who comes into my house comes through the kitchen,” he says, leading me past the cooks who are hard at work and downstairs to a wine cellar decorated from ceiling to floor with empty bottles. “They have an aperitif, have a walk around. Then we discuss what we’re going to prepare for them.”
At De Colvenier, there’s no menu – you just say how many courses you want and what your budget is, and the kitchen will take it from there. “Everything is possible,” he says. “It’s à la carte; it’s personal.”
I particularly enjoy soup with mussels, sole and scallop; veal with vegetables including caramelised endives, a Flemish speciality; and one of the simplest and creamiest rice puddings I’ve ever had. Most of the time, he says, customers ask to be surprised.
When Patrick first bought the building in 1989 it was a ruin – no lighting, no electricity, no furniture, no kitchen, no toilets; he explains with pride how he restored it from scratch.
But it has been worth the effort. “Antwerp is a nice city,” he says. “You have the harbour, the port, the diamond trade, the tourists; if you give something to this city, you get a lot back.”
• Dôme. Grote Hondstraat 2 – 2018 Antwerpen. +32 3 239 9003. Dôme Sur Mer and Domestic are across the street.
• De Colvenier. St Antoniusstraat 8 – 2000 Antwerpen. +32 3 226 6573.
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