Interscaldes
Interscaldes review at-a-glance
Awards: Three Michelin stars
+Rural setting with lots of high quality local seafood.
-Most dishes left me indifferent with only a few that really stood out.
-Pacing was on the slow side and dragged at the end.
Review Rating: 88/100
Verdict: It is easy to see what there is to like about Interscaldes. A nice rural setting in Zeeland that was honored by Chef Brevet’s cooking which is well connected to the terrior of Zeeland. There was a remarkable dish of caviar and sturgeon brandade. An almost as good king crab plate served with a sauce that contained subtle notes of whiskey. Informally, the flavors were clean and precise.
As easy as it was for me to see what there was to like about Interscaldes, it was just as easy for me to see what I didn’t like. The flavors were clean but too restrained. Some dishes felt overly simple, as if they had been edited down too much. A lobster supplement felt like an afterthought, instantly giving way to regret for ordering. Past peak winter truffles were diced into cubes and added to two different dishes, both times adding limited flavor or texture.
Other than a trip through Spain (Lasarte, AbAC, El Cellar De Can Roca), Interscaldes was one of the first three stars I visited after moving to Germany. The menu included many of my favorite ingredients so expectations were high. Unfortunately, my favorite ingredients did not translate into one of my favorite meals - the food here was neither exciting as the Spanish tasting menus that came before it or as packed with flavor as some of the classic dishes in Germany/France that came after it. A fine meal but not one that lived up to the three star expectations.
Price I Paid: €210 for an 8-course menu plus €40 for the lobster supplement
Visited: April 2019
Value: 13/20
Interscaldes and Chef Jannis Brevet Background
Interscaldes, one of only two 3 star restaurants in the Netherlands (as of 2020), is located in the sparsely populated Zeeland province in the western part of the Netherlands. While Zeeland may not have many people, it is known for its great food which covers the entire range from Michelin starred establishments to more casual places serving up fresh oysters and mussels from the North Sea. In addition to the restaurant, Interscaldes also operates as a hotel with 12 luxurious rooms.
The restaurant at Interscaldes was taken over in 2001 by the husband and wife team, the Brevets - husband Jannis runs the kitchen while his wife Claudia runs the front of the house. Success at Interscaldes has been consistent for Chef Brevet who held two stars for his entire tenure before earning the final third star in 2018. As you would expect given the remote location of Interscaldes, Chef Brevet’s cooking has a strong connection to the area’s immaculate seafood and produce (although he is not completely averse to incorporating ingredients from further away).
You can choose between an a la carte menu and an 8-course tasting menu (€210) which is consistent whether you visit for lunch of dinner (no lunch concessions here). This is a reasonable price for the quality of the food and if anything on the low side for a three-star. I did not have any wine as I was driving back to Germany directly after lunch but the wine list was vast. I visited for a Sunday lunch and went with the tasting menu.
Review of what I ate at Interscaldes
Like any proper restaurant, the meal kicked off with a series of small bites - beetroot with rose, pineapple, and buttermilk, dutch shrimps with seabuckthorn, mandarin, and hazelnut as well as smoked eel with white beans and coffee. This was a classy set of bites, well thought out and original. After the amuses, the meal got off to a very good start with an egg-shaped dish that was filled with a sturgeon brandade, granny smith apple gel, and topped with a healthy dose of Anna dutch gold caviar. Brandade is typically a combination of salt cod, potatoes, and olive oil which has been emulsified to give it a creamy texture. In making their brandade, Interscaldes cleverly replaced the salt cod with sturgeon which enhanced the pairing with the caviar (also from sturgeon). The texture on the brandade was silky smooth (similar to a potato puree) and proved a very worthy vessel for transporting the high-quality caviar to your mouth. The apple gel rounded out the entire dish by adding a bit of acidity and sweetness. A triumph that showed what Chef Jannis Brevet is capable of.
Sadly the strong start did not continue with the next dish, queen scallops with San Mazzo tomatoes, chervil, laurel, and black truffle. Queen scallops fall roughly between bay scallops and sea scallops in size and have a salty, slightly sweet taste. Here, the restaurant served them raw, diced up with some black truffle chunks, and topped it with a foam of San Mazzo tomatoes. This might sounds like quite an attractive dish but for some reason (seasoning? sourcing?) it fell flat. Raw scallop and black truffle is a classic combo but I am not sure if using queen scallops was the right choice - even if impeccably sourced they just don’t have the same natural sweetness of a bigger sea scallop. Compounding matters, the use of truffle was visually evident but their signature taste was hardly detectable. When serving them in thicker chunks of truffles (as they were here), truffles tend to benefit from being more mature as it gives them a slightly firmer, crumbly character. While the texture was there (providing a nice contrast to the soft scallops), I could not get over how little flavor they added - could this have been because they were past their peak (Black winter truffles in April is a stretch)?
The scallop was followed by a much better dish of duck foie gras with Peking spices, popcorn foam, passion fruit, and port wine. This has all the things you could want from a foie gras dish - deeply flavorful rich foie creme with a smooth texture, a surprisingly light popcorn foam, and then passion fruit and port wine to balance it all out. The passion fruit sourness and acidity was the perfect counter to the rich foie - just a tremendous combination of flavors and texture. My only complaint was tonally this felt more like an amuse-bouche than a real course.
Zeeland lobster season, which runs from the end of March through mid-July, had just begun when I visited in April. The restaurant had already received a shipment of the prized crustacean and offered it as a supplement to the tasting menu for €40. Given I have had plenty of Maine lobster but never its Dutch cousin, I decided to add the lobster supplement of Zeeland lobster, with burrata, mint, peas and orange flower to my meal. Once presented with the dish, I almost immediately regretted my decision - both visually and taste-wise it lacked refinement. For the upcharge, you got three scant pieces of lobster paired with various components where there was minimal intervention from the kitchen. Lobster and burrata is a good pairing but I would have hoped for more transformation from the kitchen. Nothing wrong with the dish but I certainly felt ripped off for the supplement.
Given it is a specialty of Interscaldes, the seafood dishes continued with lemon sole paired with violet artichoke, koji rice, diced pear, and black truffle. This was a fine course but one hard to get very excited about it - the sole was treated well but not as good as if the kitchen chose a more well regarded (and expensive) white flatfish like turbot. Much like on the scallop dish, the diced truffle on top added very little to the course and seemed mostly for show (or to get rid of some excess truffle in the kitchen). As far the accompanists go, I am no lover of artichokes and the one served here did nothing to change that opinion.
The best course of the meal was King crab with tonka beans, mango, Oban whiskey, and citrus fruits. As expected, the star of the course was the generous piece of superb crab which had a fantastic sweetness and paired beautifully with the complex sauce that had just a slight hint of whiskey. Particularly inspired was the use of tonka beans as they helped add to the aroma of the dish and brought notes of vanilla to the sauce.
The main course was a rather artfully plated lamb fillet with fennel, thyme, sea lavender, piquillo paper, and pommes soufflé. As good as the course looked, it tasted the opposite. Based on its uniform color, the lamb appeared to be cooked sous vide but tasted like they forgot to sear it before giving it the herb topping - I deeply missed the signature taste you get from the maillard reaction when meat is applied to a blazing hot pan. The various purees the lamb was served with added a great pop of color to the plate but left me confused on how I was supposed to enjoy the dish - was I supposed to combine them or eat them separately? Each puree had quite a strong flavor but did not seem to pair well together. On the positive side, the delicately stacked pommes soufflé were a delight both from the eyes and mouth.
Pre-dessert was a well conceived bowl filled with mascarpone and buddha's hand jelly that was then covered with an orange brandy snap. This was followed by the main dessert designed to show off Lambada strawberries that had been thinly sliced and placed around a vanilla filling (I recall it having a texture more firm than a panna cotta, similar to cheesecake) and paired with a Grand Marnier sauce made with figs, orange and rhubarb. The strawberries were good quality and went nicely with the sauce but the dish again felt overly simple - surely there could be a way to incorporate more textures and techniques into the main pastry offering? Fine but uninteresting.
There were no petit fours or mignardises unless you ordered coffee which was surprising. This led to a somewhat awkward event where, since I saw mignardises delivered to most of the other tables, I thought they were on their way and did not ask for a bill from the staff. As a result, I sat at my table for a solid 15 minutes while the staff busied themselves about the dining room (and eventually abandoned it altogether), too proper to ask if I was ready for the bill. I eventually tracked them down to pay and leave. Kind of an awkward end to kind of an awkward meal.