Vrijmoed

Vrijmoed is a tasting-menu restaurant on Vlaanderenstraat in the center of Ghent, named after its chef and owner Michaël Vrijmoed. His cooking gives vegetables the leading part from the first course to dessert.

Vrijmoed was born in Ghent. As a teenager he already wanted to work with his hands, but he finished school first while taking cooking classes and specializing in pastry and chocolate. His first big step was a stint with Alain Ducasse in Monte Carlo. He then trained under Guy Van Cauteren at 't Laurierblad and worked as sous chef to Peter Goossens at Hof van Cleve, and he was one of the Flanders Kitchen Rebels, a group of young Flemish chefs. He opened his own restaurant in March 2013, and the Michelin Guide gave it a star only eight months later.

French technique is the base, filtered through the respect for raw produce and the seasons that came with New Nordic cooking. Farmers and local producers deliver every week, and fish comes from the North Sea, a short drive from Ghent. Hop shoots, an expensive early-spring delicacy of Flanders, are his favorite ingredient: he has paired them with oxtail, with egg and watercress, and with suckling pig. Eel with green herbs balances the fatty fish with leaves, and skrei, the migrating Norwegian cod, has been poached and roasted with seaweed salad, asparagus and yuzu.

Gault&Millau named Vrijmoed its young Flemish chef of the year, and a year later gave the restaurant an award for the best vegetarian menu in the Benelux. Michelin later raised the restaurant to two stars, describing cooking that joins complex, refined flavors with a soft spot for vegetables, and Ghent's tourist office lists Vrijmoed among the top tables of the city.