Farm-to-table has become a buzzy term over the past decade, but Amsterdam’s De Kas has embraced the sensibility since it opened in 2001. Located inside a working greenhouse in Park Frankendael, De Kas embodies sustainable, local produce in a genuine, lived-in way. A white strawberry picked this morning could end up on your plate at dinner—an approach to dining that motivates head chef Savannah Hagendijk.
“When you start working here, you never want to go back to a kitchen where you import all these things from far away and they don’t have flavor,” she tells Observer, speaking from De Kas’ airy private dining room on a sunny day in May. “You want to cook with the seasons. You see things growing, you see the seasons, and you understand the ingredients more.”
Although she had experience with seasonal produce before coming to De Kas, being part of the growing process has deepened her appreciation for the ingredients. “You can see it with your own eyes,” Hagendijk says. “You can see that a cauliflower takes five or six months to grow. You get deep respect for all of the vegetables you work with. That’s what I teach everyone in the kitchen: to be respectful with all of the products.”
Hagendijk joined De Kas four years ago, after spending her early career at restaurants in the Netherlands and Singapore. She worked everywhere from small cafes to Michelin-starred fine dining restaurants, and co-owned a catering company with her sister in Rotterdam for a few years. She met Jos Timmer and Wim de Beer, the current chefs and co-founders of De Kas, 10 years ago in the kitchen at the Rijksmuseum’s acclaimed restaurant Rijks. They enlisted her as head chef in 2021, although both continue to prep and cook alongside Hagendijk and her team. “They’re still around and helping us,” she says. “Today we had 60 lobsters come in, and they helped us to clean them. It’s always a group effort.”
Although Hagendijk is adamant that De Kas is not a singular vision, she has helped to guide the restaurant to several recent accolades. It was awarded a Michelin Green Star in 2022 and earned a traditional Michelin Star in 2023, which is rare for a restaurant that does 300 covers a day over lunch and dinner. Hagendijk, however, sees herself as a small part of De Kas’ much longer life.
“This place is so special, but it’s because of what everybody’s been doing here for years,” she says. “One of the gardeners has been working here for 15 years. One of the dishwashers as well. There’s so much character and soul, and it’s about the vegetables being grown here. I can change some things or try to be more sustainable, but the main idea is still the same. That’s why it’s so beautiful to work here. It’s not about me as an individual. It’s the whole team and the character of the place.”
When Dutch chef Gert-Jan Hageman first acquired the greenhouse in 2001, it was abandoned and in a state of disrepair. Built in 1927, the greenhouse was originally used as an exotic plant and tree nursery, which is why it has unusually high ceilings. Hageman converted it into a restaurant and working greenhouse, establishing De Kas as a place to come for hyper-local cuisine. In 2018, de Beer and Jos Timmer took over and continued that ethos. Today, De Kas grows some of its produce in the restaurant’s greenhouse and the rest in a larger space in Beemster, north of Amsterdam, employing five farmers. Hagendijk estimates that the restaurant is about 80 percent self-sufficient when it comes to the vegetables.
“We grow the strawberries ourselves, but a lot of the fruit comes from farms that specialize in cherries and apples and pears,” she says. “We try to work with farms from the neighborhood in Beemster. Almost everything comes from the Netherlands. Sometimes we get lemons or radicchio from Italy, because they don’t grow well here. But even when you’re not entirely self-sufficient, you have to understand the growing and the ecosystems.”
Although De Kas emphasizes vegetables, it is not a vegetarian restaurant. That’s a common misconception, Hagendijk says, although the chefs can certainly accommodate plant-based diners. It’s a set menu for lunch and a different set menu for dinner, always with vegetables at the forefront. Each changes every three weeks. When I dined, for instance, the main course highlighted white asparagus, its meaty texture augmented by a rich duck jus. One of the earlier dishes was a goat kebab wrapped in lettuce, although Hagendijk notes that is an unusual entry on the menu. “We don’t do big pieces of protein,” she says. “It’s in there, but it’s not the focus. The stars are the vegetables.”
This carries over into the desserts, as well. My strawberries and ice cream were accompanied by pickled cucumbers, and the goat cheese cake was topped with peppery arugula. Hagendijk prefers dishes that aren’t overly sweet, but she also wants to showcase what you can do with a vegetable. She acknowledges that the restaurant avoids “doing crazy things” with vegetables, instead preferring straightforward preparations that highlight the ingredient’s natural flavor. That might involve blanching, grilling, pickling, or even serving the vegetable raw.
“If you understand the components already, then we can put them together like a puzzle,” she says. “It needs to be tasty and nice. For example, we always have a beurre blanc, but we change its ingredients. Sometimes it’s with rosemary from the garden. Right now it’s with lavender. Maybe we’ll use bay leaf because it pairs well with green asparagus. We always start with the foundation of what works.”
Although some dishes reappear, Hagendijk and her team respond to the micro seasons as they come. If a particular vegetable is at its best, it gets put on the menu. During my visit, those peak ingredients included asparagus, strawberries, peas and green beans—a perfect encapsulation of the late spring harvest. It’s more challenging during the winter when there are fewer fresh options. “You don’t want to serve six courses of root vegetables,” Hagendijk says. “Sometimes, we use fish more often in the winter. Lots of leafy vegetables like radicchio and endive. It’s still doable, but you don’t have all of these amazing spring vegetables.”
Many of the other ingredients, like the meat and the dairy, also come from the Netherlands. But Hagendijk doesn’t define De Kas’ food as Dutch. For the chef, the most accurate term is seasonal European, a broad definition that emphasizes the chef’s global inspiration: a French bisque, an Indian butter sauce, spiced lamb. The kitchen uses spices from all over the world, some of which are grown at De Kas, and Hagendijk is not afraid of punching up the flavors. The gazpacho that opened my meal had a noticeable kick. “We like to keep it interesting,” she says. “I like a bit of spice, a bit of sour. We keep the acidity quite high in the dishes. Even though we love good vegetables prepared well, you don’t want it to get boring. Sometimes you need to challenge yourself with different spices.”
Hagendijk doesn’t see herself as the face of De Kas—it’s a team effort, a notion she reiterates several times—but she is aware that being a prominent female chef is helpful to aspiring young women.
“There are not a lot of female head chefs in the Netherlands,” she says. “And if there are, they aren’t super visible, which is what I like about Jos and Wim, because they’re always trying to put me forward. It’s good to set an example for other female chefs. And there are many kitchens with just men. At De Kas, we have had times where more than half the team in the kitchen was women. That was super cool and I was very proud of it.”
Getting a Michelin star two years ago was a surprise. De Kas was tapped to cater the annual Michelin awards, held that year in Amsterdam’s Theater DeLaMar. Being invited onstage, however, was completely unexpected.
“We were already there doing the catering, and suddenly we also won,” Hagendijk recalls. “It was a very special moment. We’re a bit odd in the Michelin scene because we’re a big restaurant and we’re not stiff. We serve honest food. We don’t do anything crazy with it. We don’t have a lot of fermentation projects going on. In a lot of ways, we’re quite rustic.”
Someday, Hagendijk imagines having her own restaurant. But for now, De Kas is her home. Her own ideas are so deeply aligned with those of the restaurant that it makes sense to stay and continue developing her appreciation of seasonal ingredients. “I made the menu by looking at what vegetables are growing here and what we can use now, and it makes so much sense to me,” she says. “I’m guiding the overall vision, but it’s also my vision. I’m part of this bigger story about making tasty food and using all the vegetables that are in high season.”
