Food lab adds extra flavour to Flemish culinary scene
Maxime Willems gave up a post at Ghent University to develop an experimental food lab that brings together top chefs, cooking novices and aspiring entrepreneurs to test out new recipes and discover the ins and outs of the culinary business
Appetite for innovation
So when he heard about the Nordic Food Lab, created by famous Danish restaurant Noma, he decided to bring the concept of a culinary lab to Flanders.
Last November, Willems left Ghent for Schellebelle, East Flanders, where he opened the Proef! food lab on the site of a former catering company. The Innovation Centre of East Flanders, a government-funded advisory body, lent a helping hand.
The lab’s name is a no-brainer: proef means both tasting and experimenting in Dutch. Willems’ ambition is to revamp the Flemish culinary scene through scientific insights and multidisciplinary collaboration, with the use of technology usually reserved for more rigorous research.
Chefs from top restaurants can use the lab to think up their next masterpiece. Thanks to tailored subscriptions, however, the kitchen is open to anyone, from cooking enthusiasts hoping to impress guests at their next dinner party to entrepreneurs looking to launch a new product or company.
Learn the art
Apart from the typical kitchen equipment, there are also high-tech tools like the ultra-sonic probe, used in chemistry labs to break down cells and bacteria, which can extract flavours in a matter of seconds – no cooking required.
Proef! regularly hosts workshops on a variety of topics. In April, Scottish chef Ben Reade, formerly of Noma, gave a workshop on the culinary art of fermentation. As part of a special series, participants can also cook alongside promising chefs, including Kevin Gijsembergt, who used to work for the Luzine restaurant in Leuven but has since started his own culinary evenings business called Fringale.
The kitchen at Proef! was like a playground for me, with all the tools and expertise needed to come up with new flavours
Many of the workshops focus on sustainability. Brussels organisation Forest to Plate, for example, teaches participants to make dishes with wild plants they pick on their own, while the challenge of the trash cooking workshop is to create a tasty dish from ingredients that would normally end up in the rubbish bin, like cauliflower and broccoli stems.
Food surplus is also at the centre of an ambitious project that Proef! started with Hertog Jan, the three-Michelin-star restaurant in Bruges. The goal of the project, which received funding from the Flemish government’s innovation and entrepreneurship agency Vlaio, is to turn Hertog Jan’s unused food into new products. One of the rooms at Proef! already showcases sweets and vinegars created from the surplus ingredients.
Culinary playground
Proef! also offers help to aspiring cooks looking to create their own food start-ups and the entrepreneurs can even set up their offices on site. In the future, Willems hopes to bring his concept to other provinces and create a mobile service to assist chefs in their own kitchens.
One of the first supported start-ups is Monsieur Boudin, which sells witte pens, or white sausages, a barbecue staple in Flanders. The man behind it is Jeroen Tavernier, who divides his time between cooking and working as a communication officer at the Vooruit cultural centre in Ghent.
At Proef!, Tavernier developed four new versions of witte pens: in Italian, Flemish, Moroccan and Thai styles. “The kitchen at Proef! was like a playground for me, with all the tools and expertise I needed to come up with new flavours,” says Tavernier.
The food lab also organised a tasting, where participants gave feedback on their favourite recipes. “This helped me with commercialising the product,” he says. Packaged sausages can already be ordered via the website, but the supply is limited.
Fruitful collaboration
For all the success, Proef! is still a work-in-progress. For now, Willems is the only person in the lab with technical know-how. That could soon change, as the lab is launching a collaboration with Food2Know, the agri-food expertise centre at UGent.
“Our scientists can provide essential know-how concerning food safety and technology,” explains professor Benedikt Sas, the centre’s chief business officer. “We also have extensive expertise on legislation, including the use of insects in food, which could prove useful.”
Bringing together academic expertise and chefs’ creativity would undoubtedly lead to new ideas and innovations on both sides
Sas is certain that the co-operation will benefit Proef!. Among other things, Food2Know’s research also focuses on reducing food waste, through innovative packaging that shows how fresh the food is in real time.
But the expertise centre could also benefit from the collaboration. “Bringing together academic expertise and the chefs’ creativity would undoubtedly lead to new ideas and innovations on both sides,” says Sas. Proef!, for example, could serve as an experimenting ground for UGent students working on related research.
On the regional level, the food lab also fits into the Flemish government’s new project, Flanders Food Faculty, which stimulates culinary innovation. This networking organisation, part of the tourism agency Visit Flanders, was established at the end of 2015 by minister Ben Weyts to promote Flemish gastronomy abroad and support chefs participating in international competitions.
Flanders Food Faculty also aims to establish an online platform to improve the visibility of projects like Proef! These include, for example, the Food Pilots organisation, which helps the food industry to optimise their products and processes by providing test facilities, laboratory analyses and scientific advice. The organisation is part of the Flanders’ FOOD innovation platform and the Flemish Institute for Agriculture and Fisheries Research.
Culinary hub
“There are already many projects like Proef! and Food Pilots, but the landscape is still very fragmented,” says Sofie Van Den Bossche, co-ordinator of the Flanders Food Faculty. “We want to, for example, show all interested individuals and organisations how to create a kitchen that can be used for testing new products or organising brainstorming sessions, on both the national and international level.”
The supported projects, Van Den Bossche says, will cater to all actors in the food sector, “from the owner of a frituur to the chef of a top restaurant”. Special attention will also be devoted to supporting start-ups, but more on that won’t be known until October.
In the meantime, the Antwerp-based innovation consultancy Co-Create is also preparing a similarly-ambitious project. Inspired by the success of the Start-up Weekend, an event in Ghent that brought together professionals from different disciplines to pitch ideas for new start-up companies, Co-Create decided to make food innovation a priority in Flanders.
The company envisions a large food innovation hub that includes an experience centre, research facilities, a food lab and an incubator for start-up companies. “Centralising expertise and facilities in one place would help put Flanders’ food culture on the global map,” says Askim Kintziger, Co-Create’s project co-ordinator.
The company is currently negotiating with various cities and enterprises and will release more information by the end of the year. The hub is expected to launch in 2018.
Photo courtesy Proef!
