In a raw Rotterdam basement, Tres serves a fusion of science and Dutch terroir.
Walk down a narrow stairwell into the basement of an old warehouse in Rotterdam, and you find yourself face to face with a counter that glows like a stage. Only twelve stools. A kitchen without walls. The sense that you are stepping into a secret society rather than a restaurant. This is Tres, the creation of chef Michael van der Kroft and maître d’ Emy Koster, and it might just be the most intriguing dining experience in the Netherlands today.
Tres is personal, almost obsessively so. Michael and Emy run the whole thing with a team of four or five, which means every guest is within arm’s reach of the action. Over the course of an evening, diners will sit at the counter, but they are led through different spaces of the restaurant too, including the kitchen and an uneducated scientist fabled lab. Here, jars bubble away with ferments, distillations hum quietly in the background, and chefs explain the science that shapes the flavours on the plate. For food nerds, it feels like being allowed backstage at a band rehearsal to the messy, brilliant place where the magic begins.
The menu itself is an 18-course exploration of the Dutch landscape, broken into four seasonal worlds. Winter is built around the sea — shrimp, smoked eel, lobster. Spring shifts to lamb, in all its guises. Summer celebrates vegetables, fruits, and even insects, not for shock value but for flavour: think of garum made from grasshoppers. Autumn moves deep into the forest, with rabbit, duck, deer, mushrooms. Each menu is a translation of the Netherlands into flavour and form, guided by Michael’s obsession with local produce and an almost fanatical avoidance of shortcuts. Ducks are plucked in-house, garums fermented from scratch, butter churned, everything made by hand.
There is one more radical element: Tres does not use salt. Flavour comes from fermentation, pickling, dehydration, koji. A constraint that in lesser hands would feel like dogma becomes here a creative liberation. The result is food that tastes recognisably Dutch but with a clarity and intensity that is hard to forget.
Michael’s story is as raw as the cellar that houses Tres. A former BMX rider, he came to cooking almost by accident, a way to earn money after a troubled adolescence spent skirting addiction and abandonment. The kitchen became his rescue, and after his grandfather’s death he promised to be the best chef he could be. Self-taught, he turned to science books and relentless experimentation to close the gap, until his daring, technical, and deeply personal style emerged. Today, he is often described as “the Dutch Noma,” a comparison he shrugs off but which captures the spirit of invention that defines his work.
The experience at Tres is not always easy, nor is it designed to be. Dishes can be playful, sometimes provocative — an edible bunny painted in pumpkin and walnut “paint,” or a re-creation of Van Gogh’s destroyed Five Sunflowers in a Vase as a dessert. But behind the theatre lies serious craft, an insistence that Dutch cuisine deserves its own stage. As one Dutch critic put it: “Tres is bizarre, but it deserves a bigger global audience than it has.”
In Rotterdam, a city better known for its grit than its gastronomy, Tres feels like both a rebellion and a beacon. It is a restaurant that feeds you, makes you think, and makes you question what dining can be. For those willing to take the plunge down that stairwell, Tres offers a glimpse into the restless imagination of one of Europe’s most original young chefs.
Tres
Vijf Werelddelen 75, 3071 PS Rotterdam, Netherlands
www.tresrotterdam.com
