Located near the centre of Rotterdam, TRES is an intimate and highly creative restaurant embodying an experience that is atmospheric and raw at the same time. Chef Michael Van Der Kroft creates a wizardly approach to fine dining by cooking merely with local Dutch ingredients, composing a very labour-intensive menu focused on the most intense of flavors.

Concept & Location

Restaurant Tres is located at “Kop van Zuid-Entrepot” in Rotterdam. This upcoming area is one of the youngest districts of Rotterdam and forms a connection between the centre of the city and Rotterdam South. There are plenty of restaurants, shops and hotels and some of the tallest buildings in the Netherlands can be found here. With the nearby harbor, the beautiful former warehouse and shipping buildings, and the rivers flowing in between, the area reminds of riverside New York. It’s a setting where creativity flourishes.

Restaurant Tres is located at “de Entrepothaven”, a lesser known part of the “Zuid” district. In the small harbor just in front of the restaurant, several beautiful yachts await their wealthy owners to cruise the waters. It forms a great contrast with the surrounding industrial buildings, the modern apartments and the historical bridges. Within this architectural melting pot, Restaurant Tres is housed inside a former warehouse building and hidden under a beautiful, authentic loading bridge. On the ground floor guests are welcomed in the lounge with a few snacks and an aperitif. After this first act, they are led into the basement where the culinary journey continues.

A former jazz basement is the setting of the main dining room of the restaurant. It’s dark, raw, cosy and eclectic. The open kitchen is buzzing with activity and ingredients are everywhere. These are pickled in jars, hang to dry in drying greenhouses, or are cooked on an open fire.It all contributes to the warm and dynamic atmosphere. Another feature is the state-of-the-art fermentation lab where this team can work their magic approach to their food.

Restaurant Tres is a counter restaurant and there only 12 seats centered around an open, wooden bar, where the chefs put the finishing touches on the dishes. The rest of the decoration is minimal: some modern artworks contrast with the concrete basement and subtle lighting direct the attention to the counter and the culinary fireworks.

The Chef & The Team

Restaurant Tres is the work of the most hospitable couple Emy Koster en Michael van der Kroft. Emy leads the service, Michael the kitchen. Lady of the House Emy discovered her passion for hospitality on a very young age, working on the beaches of Curacao. After that she gained experience in several restaurants, where she created her own style of welcoming approach.

Chef of the House Michael is a former professional BMX-rider. He discovered his passion for gastronomy when he started working at restaurant Tosca in Rotterdam. At restaurant Meliefste he refined his cooking style and developed a love for the very best Dutch products. With restaurant “Bij Petit”, Michael opened his very first own restaurant, together with Emy and Jeroen Hoep.

After three years he and Emy returned to their roots, Rotterdam, to open one of The Netherland’s most bound braking restaurants: Tres.

Gastronomy

Chef Michael van der Kroft’s cooking is based on the best, local products from the Netherlands. He processes these in pure dishes where the essence of the ingredient is sublimated by both progressive and age-old, often very labour-intensive, preparation techniques. Pickling, fermenting, drying and slow cooking are often central. But he’s also a culinary wizard with fungi, garum, milkskin and goji. Everything at restaurant Tres is homemade: from exceptionally tasty garums (long-fermented elixirs of animal protein) to blackened gooseberry chorizo.

A meal at Tres starts at the ground floor lounge, there the lady of the house welcomes you with a glass of the finest champagne accompanied with the first appetizers.

Milkskin / Roe

Black currant leaf

Eclair / Shrimp

After tasting these very high level amuses, the guests are taken downstairs to the basement, where they first pass the kitchen. Here, the ingredients of the meal are displayed on a counter, so that the guests know exactly what the preparations will consist of, in addition one of the chefs prepares one of their newest creations before heading to the dining room.

Inoculated barley / Oyster

After tasting this amazing oyster we were invited taking a seat at the spacious dining counter. Here, the culinary feast continues at a tight and pleasant pace. About twenty snacks and dishes provide an amazing culinary spectacle.

Tortellini / walnut

Sepia / pumpkin XO

One of the highlights of the menu and their standout signature dish is the ‘pear and bell pepper’ being a pear cooked for two days in a broth made of egg white garum, dried, and glazed with a paprika-tamari. The dish is finished with a sauce of peppers, a gel of black garlic and crispy crystals of sea lettuce. An incredible dish.

‘Mussel’ / Sea buckthorn

‘Oliebol’ / trout ‘India

Lobster / Eggyolk

Yakitori / Eel / Lobster

Turbot / White asparagus / Brioché feuilletée

Millefeuille / Blackened amaze

‘Lobster tail’ / Caviar

The meal is ended with sweet servings and a tea ceremony in a second lounge in the basement, there we were served :

Aracelly Estribi / Natural geisha / Panama

Crayfish fudge

Tartelette / pumpkin seeds

Pictures previous visit:

Service And Wine

Lady of the House Emy Koster is the perfect hostess at Tres. She embodies the serene yet dynamic, creative style and does so in the service and with her wine choices. Most of the wine choices are natural wines – a logic choice to pair with the chef his pure and earthy dishes. There’s an excellent non-alcoholic beverage pairing available as well, which includes kombuchas, kefirs, (fermented) juices and teas.

Why Go?

Tres Rotterdam is a very unique restaurant. Chef Michael van der Kroft’s idiosyncratic, refined and highly creative style comes perfectly into its own in a setting that combines mystery and dynamism. A former jazz cellar sets the stage for a culinary experience that is in some ways comparable to Noma in Copenhagen. Because here, too, local ingredients play a leading role and are transformed into surprising and often crazy flavor bombs by using a wide variety cooking techniques. It’s an experience that will leave nobody untouched.