Vegetable of the year

Emile was at the presentation of the restaurant guide Gault&Millau. There, he accepted the award for the best vegetable dish of the year. The vegetable dish awarded as best vegetable dish by Gault&Millau consists of 8 varieties of bean, oil of puffed spring onion and Chinese mahogany: the French onion soup tree.

Gault&Millau’s notes praised the interplay between the botanist and the chef:

“With this award, we award a chef who handles vegetables in an exceptional way. We bumped into a headstrong chef who makes us look in a different way to something we’ve known for a long time. Like many good ideas arise when you least expect it, this chef had an inspiration while sitting on a bench in a food forest. Botanical Gastronomy was born. Where chefs usually know little about plants, a botanist knows all the ins and outs. Botanical Gastronomy brings the two together. The botanist tells what is edible and Emile van der Staak turns it into something special. He works with ingredients no one knows or uses in cooking and transcends many culinary trends.”