Bas van Kranen loves vegetables. So much so that since Amsterdam’s Flore launched in 2021, the menu at the two-Michelin-starred restaurant has continuously featured a dish comprised of more than 25 herbs, vegetables and flowers. Some are cooked, some are raw, some are pickled, and it changes seasonally. The vibrant plate underscores van Kranen’s love of produce—an obsession he’s had since growing up in Maasbracht.
“I just really like to eat vegetables,” the Dutch chef tells Observer, sitting in Flore’s private dining room. On one side is one of Amsterdam’s canals, filled with passing tourist boats, and on the other is the pristine kitchen, where the team is prepping for today’s lunch service. He acknowledges that he likes seafood and meat, too, but that’s not where his inspiration lies.
During the pandemic, van Kranen spent a lot of time learning about food provenance, which has shaped his cooking.
“I came to understand that there is a difference between a vegetable and a vegetable,” he explains. “Before, we worked with a big range of vegetables, and we didn’t know where they were coming from. They’re grown with chemicals. They’re grown for volume and speed.”
Now, Flore works exclusively with organic produce from farms in the Netherlands. “They’re grown with care, with time for flavor,” van Kranen notes. “Because of that, they became even more interesting to me. I realized it’s very underrated to cook good food with vegetables.”
In its past life, Flore was a high-end French eatery called Restaurant Bord’Eau. Part of luxury hotel De L’Europe, Bord’Eau was a successful fine dining establishment with a Michelin star and a decade of service when van Kranen was hired as its chef in 2018. He maintained the restaurant’s traditions until the pandemic closed everything down in 2020. Because he couldn’t welcome diners, van Kranen wanted to use his time wisely. He and his team began extensively researching ingredients, including the producers, the soil, the fertilizers and the climates to see how they impacted the food.
“We wanted to know everything about our ingredients, and from there the project went even bigger,” he says. “I thought about why we were using specific things. Why were we getting pigeons from France when we have a good substitute close by? I also began to think about what luxury is—is it about the lobster and the pigeon and the Wagyu beef? Or is luxury more about giving people a personal experience and creating a personality around our kitchen?”
This revelation encouraged van Kranen to suggest closing Bord’Eau, despite its history and accolades. The owners of De L’Europe were initially—and understandably—uncertain, but the chef felt that starting over was the best path forward. “I couldn’t express myself,” he admits. “What I was doing in the kitchen and the brand of the restaurant were fighting with each other. Instead of putting myself into someone else’s concept, I wanted to do what felt close to me.”
Flore debuted in September of 2021, showcasing a plant-forward menu emphasizing van Kranen’s burgeoning interest in purposefully-sourced ingredients. Nine months later, the restaurant was awarded two Michelin stars and a Michelin green star. “It was a big surprise for us,” the chef laughs. “And the way we were cooking, with a focus on vegetables, was not something Michelin was rewarding at the time. It’s a popular topic now, but we were opening a new door.”
Earlier this year, Flore relaunched again, this time with a new interior design that emphasizes its connection to nature—muted tones, textured walls and hints of the surrounding canals with its curving ceiling. A compelling addition to the space is what van Kranen called the “seasonal studio,” a room off the kitchen where the chefs display all of the ingredients used each day. Guests are invited in for their first dish, a vegetable broth served in a leaf-filled cup. The team describes the day’s ingredients and offers a choice between the meat-friendly omnivore tasting menu and the all-plant botanical menu.
“I’m not the kind of chef who is trying to teach you something on the table side,” van Kranen says. “I want my guests to enjoy a great evening or a great lunch. Bringing you into the seasonal studio breaks the ice and gives you a feeling about what is about to happen.”
During my visit in mid-May, the displayed ingredients included white asparagus, aged lamb, elderflower blossoms, crawfish, yellow zucchini and artichoke. More than 90 percent of the products used at Flore currently come from the Netherlands. The other 10 percent comprises nuts, spirits and spices—items that are more difficult to source locally.
“I don’t necessarily feel it’s better to use something from close by,” van Kranen notes. “But for me, it’s important to be aware of the person who is foraging it or growing it. By having a connection with those people, we can focus on the season.”
Flore works with 15 different farms. Many are farther out in the countryside, but a few are located on the outskirts of Amsterdam. The meat and the fish also come from the Netherlands, which is why van Kranen incorporates crawfish into a delicate dish with strawberries and a rich sauce instead of the typical lobster. This focus on what can be sourced from the chef’s own country is really what defines Flore’s food.
“It’s Dutch food because we work with craftsmen who grow food, harvest food and catch food in Holland,” he confirms. “I’m not sure if Holland has a very strong reputation as a food culture itself, because there is a huge mix of cultures in this country. If I look at the food I grew up with, there aren’t dishes inspiring enough to put on my menu. It’s not something that’s naturally in our culture. But the ingredients make it Dutch.”
Van Kranen continues to research these ingredients, including products that might not typically be used in a Michelin-starred kitchen. Right now, he’s curious about sting fish, a medium-sized white fish that comes from the nearby North Sea. He brings one over to the table as we talk. The unassuming fish, which has already had its poisonous stinger removed, was butterflied and has been dry-aging for over a week. Every day, van Kranen cuts off a small piece of the fillet to check on its progress. It’s not ready to serve yet, but he’s close.
“I do have the idea of how to prepare it,” he says. “A little bit like the Japanese do with unagi, because the fish has a very nice tension, and the texture of the meat is very meaty. I’m still busy with my trials on it. For me, it’s very important to be driven by curiosity and discovery.”
Past experiments yielded one of the current desserts, an ice cream smothered in sugared wakame seaweed and salty caviar. Finding the balance of sweetness and texture in the seaweed took a lot of trial and error; it took hours upon hours of research. “When I go into a topic, I really try to explore a lot of different techniques,” he says. “Like when we want to work on pickles, we don’t try five pickles. I try maybe 15 different pickling techniques on one vegetable, and then I select the favorites.”
Van Kranen has always embraced a challenge. Once Flore had been open for a year, he decided the restaurant would stop repeating dishes. The seasonal menu changes twice a year, but many of the dishes are swapped out weekly based on what’s available. A particular menu item, including the 25-plus vegetable plate, will never be repeated exactly as it was.
“It’s quite progressive and it’s quite intense,” van Kranen says. “But all of that work is what makes it fun. Repeating dishes blocks you creatively. I’ve really tried to forget everything I learned before [Flore] so I can work with a new palette of colors.”
The restaurant’s non-alcoholic pairing is something the chef has been invested in since the beginning. He likes to convince diners to try new things, both with the wines and with the non-alcoholic options. “It’s been a big thing for me to push the front of house team to understand that it’s not about selecting a good bottle of wine and selling a good bottle of wine,” van Kranen says. “It’s about understanding what you need for a dish and in a beverage pairing. I want to break traditions there.”
The non-alcoholic pairing is as complex as the food itself. The team uses fermentation techniques and smoking to bring out some of the flavors, and, of course, produce is at the forefront. A vegetal Jerusalem artichoke and tonka bean juice accompany the dessert, which includes the aforementioned wakame dish and a mushroom-filled choux bun. Blueberry and juniper berry juice is smoked tableside for the Arctic char course. “When we change a dish, we change the juice,” van Kranen says. “So I can’t just say, ‘This dish is ready, let’s put it on tomorrow.’ We have to develop the pairing first.”
Since Flore opened, van Kranen has pursued an obsessive level of excellence in the restaurant, as well as at home. He jokes that you should “see me make a salad for dinner” because everything he does is so precise. Although he appreciates Flore’s Michelin stars, earning them so early was jarring. Accolades encourage you to think about what other people want or expect, he says, which isn’t what he wants to do as a chef. Now, he has “totally stopped” considering outside perception.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to do whatever I think that is nice and that fits us,’” van Kranen says. “For me, that’s always the negative association with labels—it can be helpful in a way, but it can also really affect finding your personality. It can be very hard to find your personality, but it is very important to try to stick to something you love. When I created Flore, my goal was to forget everything I did before and do it the way I liked. To me, that’s success.”
