For someone who doesn’t like wild picking, Carli puts down a very nice vegetarian menu

It is a problem of this time that ambitious, talented chefs want to be chef with their own business at an increasingly younger age. I get it. Chefs are hot, they are on TV or are on the cover of Men’s Health. You are young and you want something. Or as Sous-Chef Stuart Kepser from Reverie says: « We have all the time, we have no family, we have energy. We already work for twelve hours a day, we can do that better for ourselves. » But there is also the danger: if you are between the four walls of your own kitchen six days a week, twelve hours a day, do you still develop enough?

I often think: couldn’t you get even further, get even better, get even more out of yourself if you can make the patience to look for a few more teachers, to spend a few extra years abroad? But sometimes young chefs have the intrinsic drive and inspiration to get it completely on their own. To develop on its own and to continue to renew themselves. Precisely by drawing their own plan early. Chef Luca Carli might be one of them. Time Will Tell. But Carli and his best friend and Sous Kepser make a promising start at the age of 24 with Reverie in Veldhoven.

Carli at least knows where his own powers are. « I cook with the seasons. That should do a chef. But all that biological … When I hear someone tell about it, I almost want it too. But I’m just not that Guy« He says in the short docu series New Chefs On The Block From the Food Reporter catering platform, while we see him walking with the Islamic butcher. « You don’t see me walking in a forest and picking mushrooms. I’d rather go to the shop. »

In a short time, the young chef saw a lot of star kitchens inside – Zarzo, Geranium, Tribeca and Pure C – but got the love of cooking just like that from his Indian grandmother.

In addition to the more extensive, more chic menu, there is also an Indonesian menu of three or four courses during the week. But also in the tasting menu his Indian roots immediately come to the fore in three fine amuses: a beignet with Sajoer Lodeh, a sultry bed lines of sweet potato and fresh lemon gel, and a good spicy lacquered, Indonesian fried dumpling that is in the Vega version with pointed cabbage. And that won’t be the last time tonight.

Really nice about Reverie is that it is not all French cuisine with a layer of Asian varnish

For someone who doesn’t like wild picking, Carli puts down a very nice vegetarian menu. Such as the structures of spring onion, with ginger, spring-hollandaise and gravy of roasted garlic-a sparkling celebration of Alliums; A game with different shades of fire taste. Or the salsify with fried oyster mushrooms and foam of white truffle. Or the barbecued leek, with Char Siu-lak with tempeh, lemon gel and preicrème. The leek has exactly the right cooking, wonderfully soft but still structure, but especially the sweet and sour sauce is insanely satisfactory, if the first sip of ice -cold cola just after you have opened the can – everything you are looking for when you order Chinese, but at restaurant level.

Only the Vega head dish is a bit disappointing. Green asparagus with carrot and cauliflower with piccalilly sauce is not a punishment for eating, but does not entirely transcend the level of ‘some vegetables with sauce’. The main course with lamb’s chop and lamb neck in lamb gravy with Szechuanpeper is also not worldly shocking. But certainly not bad. Soit.

Juicy mussels

Really nice about Reverie is that it is not all French cuisine with a layer of Asian varnish. It is really a mix of styles. The mussels are simply a plate of very good, voluptuous, juicy mussels in a deep, smoldering spicy boomboo based on ginger and barbecued eggplant and zucchini. Super tasty. In the salad of razor blades with fennel, pine nuts give an ultrasound of saté sauce in the midst of dill-jalapeño-vinaigrette-which makes the dish feel like a Nordic satéetje.

The only dish that is not really right is the tartar of oyster with pointed cabbage and gravy of beach scraps with Tom Yam: that scratcher sauce is so concentrated that it is really a bit too intense on the square centimeter with the oysters – maybe it would have been better with pieces of milder sepia or shrimp. The dessert is brilliant in all its simplicity: the tastiest baked banana with peanut caramel and vanilla ice cream.

Where Reverie can still win a lot is the front: a good maître with a schwung and especially a good sommelier. No wine was interesting enough to remember. « It must feel like you’re sitting in the living room with us, » says Carli in the Food Reporter docu. I hope that his own house is not completely painted in anthracite and black lacquer and his furniture is set up around a Bonzai needle tree. But I understand where he wants to go: behind the bar is the album cover of The Mederucation of Lauryn Hill Stylized drawn up next to the NOMA manual for fermenting. That style can be implemented a bit more throughout business operations.

Furthermore, I wish the men that they allow themselves not to always work for only twelve hours a day, but also to travel a lot, eat them and to cross and cross and cross. Then we could hear a lot from them in the coming years.

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