Source : www.missethoreca.nl

Chefs Peter Weinberger of The Local (left) and Jermaine Huisman of Capriole Café (right). Photo: Herbert Wiggerman.

Coffee only after or alongside a meal? No, it can also be served in it. The chefs of Capriole Café in The Hague and Het Lokaal in Amersfoort show how they cook with (good) coffee and they use it in many ways: espresso, ground coffee and processed in ice cream, a gel or a chip.

Chefs Peter Weinberger of Het Lokaal in Amersfoort and Jermaine Huisman of Capriole in The Hague both love cooking with coffee. Both work at a company that is both restaurant and coffee roastery. And so they put together a menu of five courses and an amuse bouche, all with coffee in them.

Every once in a while like-minded entrepreneurs find each other, even if their business is in a completely different part of the country. Like Het Lokaal in Amersfoort and Capriole Café in The Hague. In 2018, together with Boot Koffie, Het Lokaal won the latest edition of the Misset Horeca Coffee Top 100, with Capriole right behind in second place.

Entrepreneurs Pascal Ultee of Capriole and Rinke van 't Holt of Het Lokaal first met on the stage of that competition. They struck up a conversation and discovered that both businesses were similar - a restaurant and coffee roastery in one - and saw in each other a like-minded entrepreneur.

Cooking with coffee in Top Two Coffee Dinner


After the competition, contact remained and the idea of doing something together was born. Corona threw a spanner in the works, but procrastination turned out not to be a reprieve and at the end of 2022 there was the first result: the Top Two Coffee Dinner.

The chefs of both restaurants, Peter Weinberger of Het Lokaal and Jermaine Huisman of Capriole, cook with coffee and put together a menu of five courses and an amuse, three preparations from each chef.



The premise was that each dish incorporated its own coffee. For a week, this menu was served, with one half of the week both brigades cooking in Capriole and the other half of the week both brigades preparing the dishes in Het Lokaal.

For the chefs, cooking with coffee is not new. Since both Capriole and Het Lokaal also roast coffee, there is always plenty of coffee available. There are always one or two dishes on Capriole's menu that incorporate coffee, and at Het Lokaal they also cook with coffee on a regular basis.

Coffee as a culinary product

'Coffee is a beautiful product that can also be put to good culinary use,' says Barend Boot, owner of Boot Koffie, which has a coffee roastery with coffee bar in Het Lokaal and works closely with Van 't Holt, owner of the restaurant Het Lokaal (which also houses a bakery and delicatessen). For Misset Horeca, both chefs and the entrepreneurs discuss cooking with coffee.


Vlnr: Barend Boot (Boot Koffie), Rinke van 't Holt (Het Lokaal) and Pascal Ultee (Capriole). Photo: Herbert Wiggerman.

'If you want to use coffee in a dish, it is important to look carefully at the flavor balance. Coffee can quickly become overpowering. It often takes some time to find the right ratio with experimentation,' says chef Peter Weinberger of Het Lokaal.'

Espresso, filter or ground coffee

There is a wide variety of ways in which coffee is processed. It ranges from emptying a cup of espresso into a pan of sauce to using coffee as a rub for meat or grilled vegetables, and from chips of coffee to sprinkling ground coffee over a dish as a finishing touch and flavoring.

However, Jermaine Huisman of Capriole Café does recommend going with espresso when cooking with coffee. 'Espresso gives the fullest, sweetest coffee flavor. Although sometimes it can actually be better to use the usually fresher taste of filter coffee. But I always take espresso as a starting point, and only use filter coffee if I can't achieve the desired taste with espresso.'

But cold drip (cold brewed) coffee can also work, or even coffee husks. Those (dried) peels, also called cascara, have a full sweet taste, like red fruit. Great in a syrup or gel with a sweet dessert, for example.


Cascara, the husks of the coffee berry, are great for sweet preparations. Photo: Herbert Wiggerman

And it is advisable not to blindly use the house blend from the bag of wholesale coffee beans, but rather to look for flavor characteristics of single origin coffees. For example, coffee from Asia is often more earthy and spicy, coffee from Africa fresh-sweet and floral, and coffee from Central and South America is known for its sweet chocolate notes.


The (vegan) menu of the Top Two Coffee Dinner


Amuse (Capriole)
Linseed crackers with tartare of puffed beet; winter purslane; coffee mayonnaise (Colombia)

Appetizer (The Local)
Open raviolo of kohlrabi; spinach chlorophyll; mousseline; fermented garlic; hazelnut; vegan parmesan; gel of coffee (Boat Ethiopia)

Soup (Capriole)
Jerusalem artichoke soup with cauliflower couscous; chestnut mushrooms; Jerusalem artichoke crisp; coffee powder (Brazil)

Interlude (The Local)
Pumpkin gnocchi with foam of kale; tartare of winter vegetables; field mushroom; vegetable gravy with winter beer; coffee chip (Boat Sumatra)

Main course (Capriole)
Celeriac from bbq, lacquered with apple syrup; cream of celeriac and coffee (Nicaragua); chicory, leeks; potato chanterelles; chervil oil; sauce of riesling

Dessert (The Local)
Coffee sorbet ice cream (Panama); marinated parsnip; espuma of parsnip and 5 spices; vegan dulce de leche; raw chocolate