The Brand – Hof van Cleve
Welcome to food heaven
Michelin-starred restaurant Hof van Cleve has established itself as one of the world’s best. We met its founder and head chef Peter Goossens
It is an unnerving experience putting a live, wriggling animal in your mouth and crushing it with your teeth. But Peter Goossens has a point to prove about how delicious fresh, uncooked shrimps can be, and I can hardly refuse one of the grey, unassuming creatures enjoying its last paddle in a bowl of water. Yes, I did have a few moral qualms about gobbling it up, but the truth is that Goossens was right: it tasted amazing.
Indeed, everything tastes fabulous in Hof van Cleve, the restaurant he created two and a half decades ago from a rural farmhouse. Despite its almost banal location in flat East Flanders countryside, where the view from the windows is of fields and distant factories, it has become a Mecca for foodies. It is now just one of three restaurants in the country to boast three Michelin stars, while also enjoying a 19.5 out of 20 score from Gault Millau, and 15th position in Restaurant magazine’s prestigious global ranking. Its status now means that its patrons will happily drive to the middle of nowhere to savour Hof van Cleve’s culinary marvels.
Goossens himself is a lively, curious and playful man. At 47, he has become a familiar face on Flemish television thanks to his role as one of the judges on VTM show Mijn Restaurant!. “Belgian cuisine is the best cuisine in the world,” he says, nonchalantly. From anyone else, this might be uttered with a sly, ironic smile, but Goossens is serious. “We have a tradition of vegetables. Every Belgian family, twenty-five years ago, had a vegetable garden. But in France, families would still have to buy all their vegetables from the shops.”
Hof van Cleve has earned its reputation not through process, but product, Goossens says. While he admires other chefs who meddle with liquid nitrogen and blowtorches to produce foams, jellies and other concoctions, his innovations are in taste. “We like contrast and balance,” he says. From the initial amuse-bouches to the final coffee and macaroons, Hof van Cleve plays with flavours, textures and temperatures. They include marinated tuna with king crab and wasabi sorbet, mascarpone mousse with pistachio, ravioli of ox cheeks and langoustine, and green tea ice-cream. The challenge is to produce contrasts such as soft and crunchy, sweet and sour, sharp and smooth that combine to produce stunning results. But the seemingly wild combinations are actually a carefully balanced culinary tour de force. “On the menu we have both creative and classic dishes,” says Goossens. “Our pigeon with truffle purée and Banyuls is still on the menu after twenty years.”
Goossens also favours local produce, and he enthuses about the variety of foods available in Flanders. Fish and shellfish feature prominently, reflecting the emphasis on freshness of flavour. “The sea is just forty-five minutes away,” he says. “All our seafood, like shrimps, sole and turbot, comes from here, as well as vegetables like chicory, potatoes and tomatoes.” Hof van Cleve even makes its own wasabi: Goossens is a huge fan of Japanese cuisine, especially the kitchen discipline. He is proud of traditional Belgian staples too, like the humble French fry, which he serves with one of his beef dishes.
Seasons are also important. “We don’t serve tomatoes in autumn. Their time is July and August,” he says. “The seafood now is oysters and scallops. We change the menu five times a year, and when we do, we change everything.”
His own role models are classic chefs like Joël Robuchon and Alain Ducasse, but he warns against getting too fixated by what others do. “The most important thing is to have your own style. That’s a problem for many young chefs - I call them Rank Xerox, because they copy others,” he says.
Goossens has paid his culinary dues, working his way up through college and apprenticeships. He attended the Ter Duinen college of hotel management in Koksijde, and then spent four years in Paris, mainly at the triple Michelin star Pré Catelan. “I learnt a lot of things. I learnt the strict way of preparing food, how to cook frog’s legs and brochettes of quenelle every day,” he says. “The humility of starting out in a kitchen is very important. You have to start by cleaning the tables, then work your way up. And you have to learn to respect the product: how it grows, how to clean it.”
He opened Hof van Cleve in 1987, but had an agreement with a neighbouring restaurant not to compete for five years on the gastronomic stakes. “For five years, we had a casual restaurant with good steak-frites, a good pheasant Brabançonne, hare à la royale, vol-au-vent – all Belgian classics,” he says.
In 1992, freed from his contractual constraints, Goossens unleashed his creative juices. His rebooted Hof van Cleve was an instant success: in 1993, he was named Belgium’s best executive chef; his first Michelin star came in 1994, when he was just 30; his second in 1998, and his third in 2005. He has also launched new ventures, like operating the brasserie in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. Last November, Goossens was recruited by Dutch airline KLM to compose the menus for its business class passengers. Although he left VTM’s Mijn Restaurant! in 2010, later that year he became one of the key forces behind njam!, a cooking channel produced by Studio 100 (he spends Mondays, normally a day off from Hof Van Cleve, filming). A year ago, Goossens was appointed Knight of the Order of Leopold.
Hof van Cleve is deceptively mundane: as a Flemish farmhouse, it does not exude luxury. Its two low-ceilinged dining rooms reflect a simple rustic elegance - intimate and unstuffy - with its white walls adorned with art by local talents. But it is in the details that its excellence shines through: the furnishings are all by top Belgian designers including glass by Val Saint-Lambert, vases by Anna Torfs, Bulo furniture, and André Verroken fittings and artwork.
There are different menus with different styles to choose from such as a more classic and rustic bill of fare or a contemporary menu with inspirations taken from both the local region and from further away. All, it has to be said, will empty your wallet as surely as it fills your belly: the Discovery Menu, with adapted wines, is €325. The wine list runs to 72 pages.
And the service is impeccable. Our lunch, which lasted almost four hours and included 16 courses, was staged and presented with extraordinary precision by the friendly and knowledgeable staff, ensuring there was no sense of dead air as we waited between plates.
There were bewildering options all along the way, from the varieties of bread, butter and oil at the start, to the dozens of offerings on the cake trolley (one of four dessert courses). Before the hare is served, the waiter offers a choice of knives by Antoine Van Loocke using steel from cutlery more than a century old, and a variety of exotic knife handles, including one made from the penis bone of a walrus.
Hof van Cleve is open Tuesday to Saturday, but weekend reservations are usually made months in advance. It is an exhausting schedule for the 25 staff, 15 of whom work in the kitchen. It is a multinational staff, with a Canadian, a Brazilian, and a Romanian in the kitchen, where the main language is Dutch, with a bit of English and French. “You have to work hard in this job,” Goossens says. “Today, I got in at 7.00, and yesterday evening, I was still here at 1.00. The nights are very short. It’s not normal, because I also have a family. My children always ask where I am. ‘Where’s papa?’ ‘He’s working.’ Sometimes it’s a problem, but if you want to do this job well, you have to invest in it.” His daughter and two sons – all between 19 and 21 – have chosen not to pursue careers in the restaurant trade.
Goossens says his own passion for food started early. “I was ten years old when I realised I wanted to be a chef,” he says. His mother was a good cook, and the family had a farm with vegetables and chickens. His father was also in the catering business, travelling around to meet the country’s best bakers, pastry makers and fishmongers. “Every day he brought something back for us. So at home we had amazing food every day,” he says.
But he insists that everyone should have a decent food education. “It’s very important for parents to lead the way, teaching their children about good food. You have to teach them how to eat, how to sit at the table. When you let your children sit like this,” and at this point, he slouches down in his seat, “then it won’t work.”
This also applies to eating out, he says. “Many parents assume that once they have children, they won’t be able to take them to any decent restaurants. But you have to take your children to restaurants,” he insists. That includes the cheap end of the scale too. “I have taken my children to McDonald’s,” he says. “I go every five years or so. I like the Big Mac, but the French fries are like cardboard.” It’s a stark contrast to his own establishment, of course. But Goossens can be pretty sure that McDonald’s is not one of his competitors.
Hof Van Cleve
Founded
1987
Michelin stars
First 1994; second 1998; third 2005
Score in Gault Millau 2012
19.5 out of 20 (only Oud Sluis in the Netherlands has a higher score in the Benelux)
Cheapest à la carte item
Open ravioli with braised cheek of beef, Parisian mushrooms, rocket, langoustine and tarragon, €50
Most expensive à la carte item
White portion of turbot with caviar with leek stoemp, broccoli and prawns, €170
Length of wine list
72 pages
Whiskies, gins, vodkas and other spirits available
153
Portrait by Natalie Hill
