Niven Kunz launches NIVEN foodbox

3-6-2015

Niven Kunz from the Michelin-starred Restaurant NIVEN in Rijswijk launched his own “NIVEN foodbox. The box contains gourmet delicacies that are ‘100% Niven-worthy’ and will have a different content four times a year.

NIVEN Foodbox by Niven Kunz

The products in the box come from suppliers that Niven Kunz trusts and he uses in the kitchen on a daily basis. One of the unique selling points of the box will be the outstanding quality. The products each have their own story and are from small entrepreneurs with a traditional and authentic background. The products can vary from coffee, beer, chocolate to balsamic, chutney and salt. The contents change every season and are aimed for the home market.

Availability and tasting

One box costs €49,95 and is sold at Restaurant Niven as well as through the webshop www.nivenshop.nl. An annual subscription of € 199, – will get you a NIVEN foodbox four times a year and a three course lunch for two, including wine and water served at Restaurant NIVEN.

There will be a pretesting possibility during Taste of Amsterdam, from 4 to 7 June.

Siseng, the Asian Food Bar

27-5-2015

Siseng, the Asian Food Bar at the Quai de Jemmapes in Paris opened in December 2014. The food bar adds the Bao Burger to the thriving food scene of the Canal St.-Martin.

Siseng, worth the visit and the wait

The Asian Food Bar rapidly became popular amongst the Parisians! Last weekend there was a long line outside the small, packed but trendy and casual chic bar. Once inside you share a table with others in a tastefully decorated small bar with light bulbs, bare brick walls, dark table tops and bar stools. Very nice but busy servants who are having trouble delivering the food to the guests! And they make delicious cocktails with Asian ingredients like wasabi, ginger and sake. Combine a cocktail, glass of sake, or an Asahi beer with their great spring rolls or croquettes all served with an Asian sauce.

Tip to eat in Paris when you stroll down the canal Saint Martin

You don’t have to stroll down the canal, you can also have a relaxing afternoon with friends there like a lot of Parisians do, but anyway the signature burgers at Siseng are a great tip! The burgers are served in a bao, a steamed Chinese bun made out of rice flour. The bao burger 5 spices contains a beef patty (grilled medium rare, the French way), marinated in the 5 spices and comes with onion tempura, onion confit, rocket leaf and a caramelized tamarind sauce. But you can also choose the chicken burger Kaï with a piece of chicken, breaded in a Japanese style with coleslaw ‘maison’, fresh basil, confit de red peppers and a basil sauce with coconut milk. We also loved the tempura of vegetables and the sweet potato fries, which are really rare in Paris. The menu has been illustrated by Soba Paris.

Inspiration for those seeking for a new restaurant, we think that a small Asian Food Bar like Siseng would do great in Amsterdam or any place in the Netherlands as well!

Rembrandt ‘The Naked Truth’ during five-course dinner

21-5-2015

The Rembrandt Tower Boardroom and the Rembrandt House Museum are joining forces for a pop-up restaurant. For two weeks, guests can eat between artworks about nude studies by Rembrandt and his colleagues during a five-course dinner at top notch level with breath-taking views of the Dutch capital.

The exhibited etchings are an exclusive preview of the exhibition ‘The Naked Truth’ held in the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam from 12 February until May 14, 2016. Last July we wrote about the first edition, which turned out to be a great success. This second edition from 21 September to Rembrandt’s death anniversary on October 4 will be on the top floor of the famous Amsterdam Rembrandt Tower as well. It’s one of the rare moments when the boardroom opens its doors to the public.

With its special location and excellent service, the Boardroom normally is a popular venue for private business meetings of Top 500 enterprises from the Netherlands and abroad. The 360 degree view from the tallest building in Amsterdam is impressive: on clear days even Utrecht, The Hague and Rotterdam can be seen.

Repeated due to the large success

What began in 2014 as a one-off initiative is repeated due to the large success. Alexandra Hutter, founder and director of the Rembrandt Tower Boardroom: “The response we received last year during ‘Hemels Rembrandt’ (translated as ‘Heavenly Rembrandt’) were overwhelming. Dutch personalities like Gerdi Verbeet, Eva Jinek and Cornald Maas enjoyed this unique synergy of art and gastronomy, like many others. Due to popular demand and to our great joy we organize a new edition this year. ”

Rembrandt Tower Boardroom supports the Rembrandt House Museum in the purchase of an important work by one of Rembrandt’s pupils, made in the workshop of the museum. This original work is also shown at ‘Hemels Rembrandt’. Rembrandt’s nudes were controversial, because he wanted to create a realistic picture: sagging breasts, folding pockmarked bellies and thighs, he did not hesitate to portray such “flaws.” This horrified fellow artists who prefer to draw graceful, classically proportioned models.

Reservation

Enjoy art and gastronomy in Amsterdam at high level during the Hemels Rembrandt weeks and book from 2 June onwards. Keep in mind that the prices are as exclusive as the event.

Environmental friendly food carts – lessons from the food truck scene in NYC

20-5-2015

The green MRV100 food cart from the company Move Systems, is coming to the streets of New York City this summer. The new food cart is cleaner, more quiet and the unit runs on compressed natural gas with a solar panel providing supplementary power. The food cart has the ability to charge from the electrical grid. It’s equipped with a point of sales system including the ability to pay by credit card and has electronic inventory control. The cart is equipped with a restaurant-quality kitchen with better refrigeration facilities than typical at most food trucks.

If you have ever been to New York City in the past, you will remember the great ‘dirty water’ hotdog carts with the pretzels and in more recent years the famous food trucks. There are as many as 8.000 mobile food vendors, serving all kinds of street foods. Most of these food trucks are relatively old-school. The vendors are cooking with propane gas and their trucks are diesel-powered dirty and noisy verhicles.

Lessons from the food truck scene in NYC

Amsterdam is just allowing the first food trucks in the city and food truck festivals like TREK are getting more and more popular. This might be the best time to start working with new, sustainable, food trucks. We recently spotted another new generation food truck by Peugeot, which will be present at the French Pavilion during the World Expo Milano 2015. Before we spoil Amsterdam with the charming but polluting food trucks, let’s look at more sustainable alternatives.
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Zoku: hotel – office – living

19-5-2015

Zoku will be facilitating global living and working, it’s a home-office hybrid with the services of a hotel and the social buzz of a thriving neighbourhood. The first Zoku will open this fall in Amsterdam.

Zoku is announced as the end of the traditional hotel room. This new hotel concept is a hotel, office and residential space in one. This way they will meet the needs of global nomads, for who working internationally is an essential part of their lives. The Zoku Loft will offer them an efficient workspace that also provides a comfortable and cozy feeling of home at inspiring places.

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Project Foodography: plates that guarantee a perfect picture of your food

12-5-2015

We have already written many articles on how to handle the wish of your guests to photograph your dishes. Project Foodography is a concept that is developed around the art of food porn: dishes photographed on specially designed plates. The plates, called ‘The 360’ and ‘The Limbo’, offer ideal conditions to photograph the Michelin cuisine of restaurant Catit in Israël.

A perfect photo

There are quite a lot of solutions for chefs to ensure that the pictures of his or her dishes look as good as possible. In 2014 we wrote about the Dinnercam and the Apicbase.com was introduced in the Netherlands during Chefs®Evolution by Jonnie and Thérèse Boer (from The Librije***) in September. The device offers a chef and his guests the opportunity to make great quality pictures of what they eat and directly place the picture on their social media channels via the APIC device.
Project Foodography does this through special plates which reflect the light better or you can simply rotate the plate. ‘The 360’ plate has a rotating pedestal allowing customers to spin the dishes around and photograph the dish from all angles. The another plate, ‘The Limbo’ is kind of a mini-studio, it has a high back which reflects the light. This Instagram optimization dinner costs 100 pounds per hour (including the meal).

Foodography is a collaboration of restaurant Catit in Tel Aviv and Carmel Winery from Israël. Ceramic design artist Adi Nissani is responsible for the design of the plates. We spotted Moshik Roth, chef from & Samhoud|Places in Amsterdam in the video and we hope that he will introduce the plates in the Netherlands!

Exhibition of ‘Golden Moments’ in ‘A bar’ in the Amstel Hotel

11-5-2015

From 12 May to late June a selection of photographs from the book ‘Gouden (golden) Moment’ will be on display in ‘A bar’. Anita Bos, General Manager of the Amstel Hotel, was moved by the beautiful pictures and amazing stories of the children. The Amstel Hotel supports the foundation with the exhibition.

What’s the ‘Gouden Moment’ foundation ?

‘Gouden Moment’ foundation aims to create a special moment, to fulfill a wish for people in a special target group and for organizations representing the interests of these people. They do so by organizing and facilitating meetings between persons belonging to one of these special targets, in this case children with Down Syndrome and their idols. The idols can be very different; someone from the immediate surroundings of the child or a well-known athlete, actor or singer. The encounter with various idols was captured and distributed through various media channels such as the Internet, books, television, and the exhibition at InterContinental Amstel Amsterdam.

About the book ‘Gouden Moment’

To realize the book, 77 children with Down syndrome got the chance to spend a golden moment with their idol. They had a ‘meet and greet’ of 1,5 hours and this special moment was captured on film. Marco Borsato was the first to say ‘yes’ and Hans Klok, Giel Beelen, Jeroen van der Boom, Roel van Velzen, Bobbie, Bassie and Adriaan followed, like many other celebrities. This resulted in moving moments for both the children and the celebrities. Pictures are displayed in the book ‘Gouden Moment’.

About ‘A bar’ in the Amstel Hotel

A bar is a contemporary bar in InterContinental Amstel Amsterdam. Here, it all comes together what’s special about the city and its surroundings and they serve great contemporary cocktails.

We want to buy our groceries through the wall!

8-5-2015

Early May the second Bilder & De Clercq Wall has been placed in the most sustainable building in the world: The Edge on the Zuidas (South of Amsterdam). The new prestigious headquarters of Deloitte/AKD designed by PLP / Architecture.
This allows the employees of these offices to order their groceries at Bilder & De Clercq every workday, without leaving the office. Same day delivery without subscription! To use the Bilder & De Clercq Wall, one must download the Bilder & De Clercq app and enter payment details. We have previously written about the first Bilder & De Clercq Wall in Google’s office in Amsterdam.

The future of grocery shopping?

We would love a wall like the Bilder & De Clercq Wall at our office! No more worries about what to eat, no overwhelming choices. Just order it until 15:30 and pick up the groceries from 17:00 hours. No more shopping stress during weekdays! The wall offers 14 dishes, plus some drinks and small bites.
After registration you order the dishes either by tapping into the app, or by keeping the smartphone in front of the dish of your choice. The wireless NFC chip in the phone takes care of the communication. We know a similar concept from South Korea where supermarket chain Tesco has developed a virtual shop at a subway station. Yes.Tap makes contactless payments possible.

Bilder & De Clercq

With their store Rogier Leopold and Diederik Van Gelder facilitate people who want to cook tasty and healthy but just don’t want to dub about the menu. With a weekly changing menu, Bilder & De Clercq offers choice of fourteen dishes for which they provide the ingredients in the right amount. They have a shop in Amsterdam (on the corner of the Bilderdijkstraat and the De Clercqstraat) and already two Bilder & De Clercq Walls. The second store on the Ceintuurbaan will close in the end of May and they will focus on the office market. More info? Contact info@bilderdeclercq.nl

GPS-Bottles leads finders to the Heineken experience

6-5-2015

Amsterdam’s Heineken Experience has littered GPS-enabled beer bottles through the city which can lead curious residents and tourists to the beer museum.

Anyone picking up one of the bottles around Amsterdam will feel the bottle vibrate and see the cap light up as it activates. The in-built compass and rotating cap will then guide the finder through the city directly to the Heineken Experience.

GPS-bottles instead of flyers

The idea is to boost the visitors to the branded museum, which saw 730,000 visitors last year. Heineken teamed up with JWT Amsterdam to attract more visitors to their brewery. The custom-made Heineken bottles had an integrated GPS system designed to lead people who picked them up back to the Heineken Experience brewery.

Dirk Lubbers, manager of the Heineken Experience, said: “Handing out flyers is not very Heineken, so we wanted to play on the brand’s famous inventiveness, wit and pioneering spirit and create something that stands out for potential visitors. Our key differentiator is that we invite each visitor on a cultural and historical journey, enabling them to interact with the brand. This initiative is a great representation of our approach: innovative, dynamic, surprising, and always leave you with unforgettable memories.”

Pre-order and self-checkout at Dell canteen

23-4-2015

Dell employees in Amsterdam don’t have to wait in line anymore at the cashier in the company canteen. Since a short while they order and pay their own lunch with a special “Dell Cafe” app, the package can be picked up a little later.

Order Mobile

eMove.me was commissioned by caterer ‘Van Laar Catering’ to develop the Dell Café concept. The app is designed and developed by YES.TAP.

eWallet

The app has an integrated payment service so that the employee can recharge by phone. This “e-Wallet” saves the employee time, leaving more time to enjoy his lunch. The app works ‘cashless’: customers pay a prepaid credit. The transaction capabilities are an interesting alternative to the recently disappeared chipknip. Additionally, less cahiers are needed and transaction costs are lower.

No more waiting in line

According to Martijn Lukaart CEO eMove.me there is no need to stand in a row anymore in the retail and catering industry. eMove.me is an independent and exclusive distributor of several m-commerce solutions. Earlier, we wrote about the order application at foodcourt The World in Rotterdam where recently Open Tabs is implemented.