Vossius (Amsterdam) closed

[bastien]

After 22 months restaurant Vossius has closed its doors because of bankruptcy. Chef Kranenborg and maître Vincke opened the restaurant together with the goal to get the first ***-star restaurant in the Netherlands. (However, Parkheuvel (Cees Helder) in Rotterdam turned out to be the lucky one with 3 stars.)From the beginning, the restaurant was topic of many discussions on the quality of the food, the prices and the service. A few months after it opened it got *-star, but with the last edition of the Michelin Guide the restaurant didn´t get two stars -- while Vermeer (Pascal Jalhaij) did get one star after a few months and the next year the second star.

Apparently, the owners didn´t pay the rent since the autumn of last year. Despite the high prices, Kranenborg said that his restaurant was loaded with people every evening and that the clients very extremely satisfied with the quality of the food -- but he was wrong.

You can´t aim at the top, have only business people having lunch and dinner and saying you don´t want guests who can´t say the difference between top quality food and quality food (because business people can´t tell!).

Anyways..., you can´t have lunch or dinner here anymore -- did anyone have?

[paulbrussel]

Well... I had once, just after opening in October 2001. It was a disaster, as well as the food (however well prepared, but rather plain and there was no choice at all: you could only take the Work-in-Progress menu), the wine list (e.g. since it wasn't entirely opened, there were not many wines, only about 18 of which astonishingly one third (!) was champagne - already bad priorities in those days...) as the service. The latter was extremely poor - rarely seen such a service.

Stories I read afterwards, did not convince me of giving it a second chance.

Although, I almost entered last Saturday for lunch! But I was too occupied with visiting art galleries and didn't manage. But I suppose they would not have been great on their last day.

That very evening I went to Vermeer** where Pascal Jalhaij is in charge. Indeed was his career in Michelin very fast, and do keep in mind that when Kranenborg left La Rive to start his own restaurant, Jalhaij was his sous-chef and of all people: the sous-chef got his second star earlier then Kranenborg did!

I am afraid the arrogance of both chef and Vincke, as well as their extreme high prices according to Dutch standards have brought them where they are now...

[paulbrussel]

They are not bankrupt yet - friends try to help them out to start again or to continue. The restaurant remains closed however. I will update when more news is available. There are lots of articles in the Dutch press now.

[paulbrussel]

The bankruptcy has become definite today, by decision of the Court. There will be no restart.

[paulbrussel]

For those interested: Robert Kranenborg (formerly chef of La Rive - two stars at the Amstel Hotel, followed by his restaurant Vossius which got one Michelin star) is going to start a restaurant "Le Cirque" in Den Haag - Scheveningen.

It will be attached to the theatre "Circustheater" - that explains the name, so there is no connection with the famous restaurant in New York.

Kranenborg wants to get again his good (Michelin star) reputation in this new restaurant.

He will work together with the former CEO and owner of Joop Van Den Ende Productions who sold his company to Spanish Telefonica, but is still working in the field of theater productions.

[vserna]

One minor correction, Paul: Van den Ende's company never was sold to Telefónica. It was merged in 1994 with John de Mol's Endemol, and this company was later sold to Telefónica.