Pure C

Pure C review at-a-glance

Awards: Two Michelin star

+A stunning location on the North Sea coast provides the perfect backdrop to Chef Syrco Bakker’s seafood focused food.

+Serving Michelin star caliber meal as part of room service is a unique and exciting experience.

-The meal had some issues with repetition - the starter and entree had very similar sauces.

Visited: March 2021

Review Rating: n/a

Verdict: I visited Pure C when restaurants were shut down due to the ongoing winter 2020 / spring 2021 COVID lockdowns in the Netherlands. As a result, we had the “Pure C Casual” menu which is served as part of Strandhotel’s room service menu. While this may not be the full Pure C experience, it felt like a worthy facsimile of what the restaurant offers. The food was made by the team of Pure C and the dishes were served to your room complete with sauce pours and detailed explanations of the various components - always from a safe distance of course!

Given it was not a meal in the actual restaurant, I don’t feel like it would be fair to give the restaurant a full-on rating. The experience was more a peek into what Pure C offers rather than the full-blown experience. For this kind of “preview”, the success of the meal comes down to if the food was good enough to make me want to revisit when the restaurant reopens. The answer to that question is yes although I hope there is more variation in flavors at the restaurant proper.

Price I Paid: €135 Pure C Casual in-room menu plus €75 for caviar supplement

Value: 11/20

Pure C Background

Pure C is located at the Strandhotel in Cadzand-Bad, Netherlands, right on the Belgium border and not far from Bruges. Most importantly, the hotel is located directly on the beach with great views of the North Sea (springing for a sea view room is highly recommended). I formerly lived in New England and the whole area was somewhat reminiscent of Cape Cod. In addition to Pure C, the Strandhotel hosts a number of other restaurants (all under the Sergio Herman umbrella) including a Japanese establishment called Blueness and a casual seafood restaurant named AirRepublic.

We visited Pure C in March 2021 when most of the restaurants in Europe were shut down due to COVID. Rather than close down completely during this time, Pure C and the Strandhotel decided to adapt and offer a Pure C casual menu (€135) as in-room dining. While the menu was called “casual”, this was serious food worthy of the Pure C branding. The experience (roughly 4 courses, 5 if you count the caviar supplement) is a tad shorter than the full Pure C tasting menu but still felt very representative of the Pure C experience.

While the meal was served in our room, we did get to visit the regular dining room to pick drinks/supplements and it was fantastic - floor-to-ceiling windows with sweeping sea views and lots of wood. While I was a tad sad not to get to eat in such an elegant dining room, the in-room set-up was no slouch either - the hotel set the table (white tablecloth and all) directly in front of the sliding glass door which offered views of the North Sea. This was as close as you can get to eating at a Michelin star restaurant without actually being in a Michelin star restaurant.

Pure C first opened in 2010, the second of Sergio Herman’s restaurants - his first being Oud Sluis which earned him three stars and his reputation as one of the best Chefs in Europe. Chef Herman famously shuttered Oud Sluis in 2013, stating he had reached his peak at the restaurant and was ready for a break and try something new. This break turned out to be stepping away from the kitchen and becoming more of a restauranter - Herman opened a series of restaurants including Air Republic (a casual seafood restaurant in Cadzand-Bad), Frites Atelier (an upscale fries shop with 6 locations), and The Jane (run by Herman’s right-hand mand at Oud Soulis, Nick Brill) to go with the already open Pure C. Acclaim for these projects has been virtually universal - the Jane being the most successful as it regularly ranks highly on the Worlds 50 Best while also holding two Michelin stars.

The chef at Pure C since opening is Syrco Bakker who formerly worked with Herman at Oud Sulis. The restaurant is located in the Zeeland province of the Netherlands which is known for its remoteness and long North Sea coastline. Chef Bakker’s cooking is almost singularly focused on showing off the seafood that Zeeland is known for - every course we had was a seafood dish with no meat in sight.

What we ate at Pure C

The first delivery was a doozy and included two separate dishes, first a north sea plateau which included a zeeland oyster with caviar and roe, razor clam, and a mussel. I imagine the plateau is similar to the amuse bouches you might get at Pure C restaurant with its many small bites that help get you excited for everything else to come. Like any good Michelin tasting menu, the hotel also included a bread basket which included some excellent quality butter and an interesting roll that had notes of seaweed.

While the platter was good, it was more of an opening act for the European lobster dish it was served with. Paired with leeks, plankton, and a few beautiful pomme souffles, this was a technical wonder from the kitchen. I really appreciated that the lobster had no hint of rubberiness and paired very well with the buttery leeks. Properly made pommee souffles are always a joy (and something I would never try at home) and these were no exception - crisp and airy at the same time. Lobster is a premium ingredient so its inclusion helped justify the highish price tag of the Pure C Casual menu.

Since we were celebrating my wife’s birthday, adding the caviar supplement (€75) was a no-brainer. €75 is a lot for a course but included a full 30g tin of Royal Belgian Caviar which has a retail price of roughly €50 so the mark-up was not too bad. The dish itself featured a rather orthodox combination of potato, transformed into a creamy mousseline, and caviar. While the flavors were tried and true, the execution from the kitchen was excellent. The mousseline was silky smooth and the amount of caviar ample so you could really enjoy the luxurious ingredient. I also appreciated the small chunks of fried brioche added on top of the mousseline - they added a great crunch and textural contrast to the sleek mousseline.

The main course was spring on a plate, featuring redfish with morels, asparagus, grey shrimp, and spring garlic. This was a nice flakey piece of fish with the grey shrimp adding a good texture and the flavor of the sea. Perhaps the morels and asparagus could have been of more dazzling quality (they were just in season as we were visiting on the first day of spring), but a strong dish nonetheless. Another critique was the sauce on the redfish was very similar to the sauce on the lobster - I could have used more variation between the courses as it was a little bit boring to have the similar flavors on the palate a second time.

Dessert featured diced pear and a chocolate mousse flavored with calvados (a brandy most often made with apples). While I am predisposed to dislike chocolate desserts, this mostly worked for me. The mousse was quite rich but the kitchen mostly balanced it out with the quenelles of ice cream and the tart pear. If I was to nitpick the dessert felt a bit out of place after the main course that was so focused on the ingredients of spring - I typically associate pear and calvados with fall or winter. There was also a bit of an issue with the quality control as one of the four dehydrated crisps in the back was overly chewy while the other three were very pleasant.

To make sure you got the complete restaurant experience, dessert even included some creative mignardises to finish off the meal. As a bonus of eating in your own room, we were able to wait a few hours before enjoying the mignardises so we ate them when we weren’t full from the main meal - I think I enjoyed these more than usual because of this.

Overall, the in-room Pure C experience fit the bill for what we were looking for - a special way to celebrate during a time when most restaurants and hotels are closed. It cost an arm and a leg (the menu cost €135/pp while the room was €420) but it was worth it as a one-time thing to have a unique experience. The hotel is running a promotion right now that includes a night at the hotel, dinner for two, and a free copy of the chef’s book. The cost is the same if you just book the room and meal separately but the book is a nice perk - just make sure you ask for it as we didn’t and left sans book.