Restaurant Merkelbach

Geert Burema has cooked Slow Food lunches in the coach house of Amsterdam's last country estate since 2004, with herbs picked from the park outside.

In the right coach house of Huize Frankendael, the only surviving buitenplaats in the city, Geert Burema has been quietly running one of Amsterdam's most principled kitchens since 2004. He founded the Dutch Slow Food chefs alliance, and the menu reads like the manifesto: daytime cooking that is largely vegetarian, herbs from Park Frankendael itself, meat and fish from farmers he can name without checking. Lunch might be kimchi hummus with grilled pointed cabbage or a koolrabi tartlet with green asparagus, plated with a precision that would cost double across the ring. The terrace looks onto what locals stubbornly call the most beautiful garden in Amsterdam, and they are right. Evenings belong to the neighborhood in the oldest sense: birthdays, weddings and condolence gatherings in the eighteenth century salons. De Kas gets the taxis and the headlines. The Watergraafsmeer keeps Merkelbach for itself, on weekdays, in daylight, at half the fuss.

It is a daytime restaurant, so treat it as the long lunch it wants to be: the three course menu, a glass from the small list, and a walk through the Frankendael stijltuin afterwards. Book ahead for a terrace table in summer.

Photo: Restaurant Merkelbach / Huize Frankendael