Chef Interview: Mike and Jim Cornelissen, Restaurant Rijnzicht, Netherlands

"Rooted in a fourth-generation family legacy, this place traces its beginnings to a small wooden hut serving refreshments to bargemen and ferry passengers, rebuilt after WWII into a café with a dance hall before evolving, under the brothers’ parents, into a simple restaurant with rooms above. Today Mike and Jim Cornelissen run it with an Innovation Menu that starts with creative, playful snacks and leads to larger courses grounded in classical French technique with a modern vein; they often serve dishes themselves to let their passion show. A signature duck cooked with hay honors an old preservation custom: farm‑reared ducks are surrounded with fresh hay daily for three weeks, then the hay is packed into the cavity and the bird is cooked in a Big Green Egg. The menu changes every three months—two spent noting seasonal availability and one testing and perfecting—and sourcing leans on quality and nearby finds like goat’s milk and cheese producers, local beef, a local forager, and a villager who calls with vegetables and flowers from his garden, while going further afield when needed. Diners now come from Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam, and from January the plan is to stop simple lunch dishes and offer a shorter version of the dinner Innovation Menu, with longer‑term ideas like high‑level accommodation and perhaps turning the old dance hall into a cookery school or kitchen studio." - The MICHELIN Guide Nordic Editorial Team