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L'Amandier Food Identity independently reviewed
Food Identity How restaurants source, cook and care. Independently reviewed

L'Amandier

A family run gastronomic restaurant in a historic Genval villa, where Martin Volkaerts builds market led menus around vegetables, fruit and herbs cut from the restaurant's own garden.

Food Identity How restaurants source, cook and care. Independently reviewed

L'Amandier

A family run gastronomic restaurant in a historic Genval villa, where Martin Volkaerts builds market led menus around vegetables, fruit and herbs cut from the restaurant's own garden.

The essentials, at a glance


Documented practices
Independently
reviewed
Local sourcing
Seasonal cooking
Plant-forward menu

Documented practices

Local sourcing Own garden grows vegetables, fruit and herbs
Seasonal cooking Menu changes monthly with market and season
Plant-forward menu Garden composition of vegetables, fruit and herbs

Style
Fine dining
Cuisine
French
Good to know
Terrace
Garden
Recognised by
We're Smart Green Guide
Recognised by
We're Smart Green Guide·2 radishes

The delicious details

L'Amandier is a family restaurant in Genval, settled since 2022 in a historic villa standing in its own greenery. Martin Volkaerts cooks to one organising rule: what the season and the market offer decides what reaches the plate. He has said he objects to kitchens that serve the same produce all year round.

Menus are built around vegetables, fruit and herbs, a number of them cut from the restaurant's own kitchen garden and greenhouses. The signature dish is that garden itself, a composition of garden vegetables, fruit and herbs brought to the table under a smoke dome. Plates stay deliberately spare, usually three main ingredients worked several ways.

Elegant salons hung with art, generous spacing between tables and a terrace for warmer months frame the meal, with the garden in view.

Menu
What's on the table, and what's left off

Market-driven multi-course menus built from seasonal vegetables, fruit and herbs from the restaurant's own garden, paired with fish, shellfish and game. Menus change with the market and season. Dishes are spare (usually three main ingredients worked several ways) and sauces are made to order in the kitchen.

Cooking is to order, with sauces made in the kitchen rather than bought in, and dishes named for their raw ingredients: white tuna with galangal and yuzu, pumpkin, hare with celeriac, scallops with Iberian guanciale.

Vegetables carry real structural weight here, and the kitchen's best known plate is a composition drawn straight from the garden. Fish and shellfish appear through the seasons, scallops from October, alongside game in autumn.

Menus run as fixed multi course selections, from a business lunch to longer tasting menus, with cheese available as a supplement or a replacement course. Guests are asked to flag any allergy or intolerance before the meal.

Cuisine

French
Allergies & intolerances
How this kitchen handles the EU-14 allergens
Handled on request
Public sources point to a working level of allergen accommodation, but no dedicated preparation area. Treat this as a starting point and confirm directly.
Always confirm your allergy directly with the restaurant when booking.
Researched from public sources · amandier.be · not yet confirmed by the restaurant
Impact score
How this restaurant rates
3 - Endorsed

Sourcing sits close to home: the restaurant grows vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers in its own garden and greenhouses, and buys the rest of its produce from market gardeners and producers in Walloon Brabant.

Seasonality is the organising principle rather than a seasonal flourish, with menus written as a return from the market and turning over with the year, so autumn brings pumpkin, chestnuts, hare and game while scallops wait until October.

Vegetables are given structural weight on the menu, and the signature plate is a composition of vegetables, fruit and herbs cut from the garden and served under a smoke dome. The restaurant is listed in the We're Smart Green Guide, the specialist guide to vegetable led cooking.

The impact dimensions

Local & direct sourcing✓

Seasonal cooking✓

Sustainable animal products

Social impact✓

Plant-forward menu✓

Own kitchen garden and greenhouses supply vegetables, fruit and herbs; remaining produce from market gardeners and producers in Walloon Brabant.

The restaurant's own kitchen garden and greenhouses supply vegetables, fruit, herbs, flowers and wild strawberries, corroborated by current independent guide coverage. The Michelin guide describes the chef drawing on produce grown in his own garden, and Gault&Millau describes the kitchen garden supplying the signature plate.

Remaining produce is bought from market gardeners and producers in Walloon Brabant. Proteins run wider: the published menu lists white tuna, langoustine, scallops and Iberian guanciale, and a June 2022 regional interview additionally named Made in BW network, asparagus from Ferme de Gentissart and saffron from Thorembais.

Strongest sourceccimag.be ↗

Menus change monthly with the market and season, built as a return from the market rather than holding year-round courses.

Seasonality is the kitchen's stated organising principle. The chef is on record saying a kitchen must be seasonal and he objects to restaurants offering the same produce all year round.

Menus are published as a return from the market and change with the season: autumn brings pumpkin, chestnuts, pear, hare and game, and the chef waits for scallops to come into season in October. Carte items such as white tuna and Iberian pork are year-round imports alongside the seasonal core.

Strongest sourceWe're Smart Green Guide ↗

Menu names species and some regional sourcing (Iberian guanciale, bouchot mussels) but no butcher, fishmonger or farm, and no welfare certification.

The published menu names white tuna with galangal and yuzu, scallops with Iberian guanciale, langoustine and hare; Gault&Millau additionally describes brook trout and bouchot mussels, bouchot being a named rope-grown mussel method. No butcher, fishmonger or farm is named for any animal category, and no welfare or fisheries credential such as MSC, ASC or organic meat certification is evidenced. A named animal product supplier or welfare label would strengthen this assessment.

Strongest sourceamandier.be ↗

Family business in its second generation; chef credits the team's contribution to results but no named social commitment, community project or training programme is documented.

L'Amandier is a family business run by the second generation. The chef dedicated his 2022 Gault&Millau Young Chef of the Year award to the whole team, saying the restaurant's results come from every member's work. In a regional interview he describes the kitchen as teamwork and says he listens to ideas the team puts forward; the kitchen had grown to around ten people. No named charity, community project, apprenticeship, training programme, employment commitment or social partner organisation appears in any channel.

Strongest sourceccimag.be ↗

Listed in the We're Smart Green Guide as plant-forward; signature plate is a garden composition; vegetables carry deliberate weight though menu is animal-protein led.

The restaurant is listed in the We're Smart Green Guide, the specialist guide to vegetable-led cooking, which validates plant-forward intent and positioning. That listing describes a light cuisine honouring seasonal and market produce, a seasonal vegetable garden featured systematically.

The kitchen's signature plate is the garden itself, a composition of vegetables, fruit and herbs from the potager served under a smoke dome. Vegetables carry real and deliberate weight without being structurally dominant: the menu published at assessment runs as an animal-protein-led progression of white tuna, scallops with Iberian guanciale, hare and langoustine, with pumpkin as the single vegetable-led course. No vegetarian or vegan menu is advertised.

Strongest sourceWe're Smart Green Guide ↗

Sourcing signals

✓
Own-grown produce

The restaurant works a kitchen garden and greenhouses supplying vegetables, fruit, herbs, flowers and wild strawberries, corroborated by current independent guides.

Visit & practical info
Address, price, and more
Address
Avenue Albert 1er 288, Genval, Belgium
Open in Google Maps ↗
Price
€€€
Format
Multi-course tasting menus. Allergy notice required at booking.
Hours
Monday12:00–13:30, 19:30–21:30
Tuesday12:00–13:30
WednesdayClosed
Thursday12:00–13:30, 19:30–21:30
Friday12:00–13:30, 19:30–21:30
Saturday19:30–21:30
SundayClosed
Style
Fine dining
Good to know
Terrace
Garden
Web
amandier.be
Reviewed by My Treats
Last reviewed 07 Oct 2026
Reserve To website
Link copied
How we score
The My Treats impact scale

Every restaurant is assessed against SEERO, our six-dimension sustainability framework — covering sourcing, seasonality, waste, animal products, social impact, and plant-forward cooking. Each finding is weighted by how strongly it is corroborated. The combined result is translated into an impact score from 1 to 5.

The five levels

SEERO is an acronym for Starting, Engaged, Endorsed, Recognised, Outstanding:

Starting First verified signals of sustainable practice.
Engaged Credible practice across two dimensions.
Endorsed Meaningful practice across three or more dimensions.
This place
Recognised Strong practice across four or more dimensions, with independent corroboration.
Outstanding Top-tier practice, confirmed by recognised third-party audit.

How a level is reached. Each level needs two things together: a minimum number of dimensions covered, and a minimum overall strength of evidence across them. A dimension only counts once its evidence is specific and substantiated — a passing mention doesn't qualify. Meeting only one of the two keeps a restaurant a level lower.

Scores of four or five require human validation and, at the top tier, an external audit. Scores are based on publicly available evidence and restaurant submissions at the time of assessment.

Full methodology→
Impact dimension
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How this dimension works
—
How evidence is weighted
Self-declared Stated by the restaurant on its website, menu or in a submission. Plausible, but not yet independently corroborated.
Researched Found through independent research; one credible third-party source backs the claim.
Vouched Corroborated across more than one independent source. Some gaps may remain.
Audited Fully corroborated across independent sources or by a recognised third-party certification.
What the sourcing checkmarks mean
✓ Full check — independently verified: corroborated across more than one source, or audited / third-party certified (vouched or audited).
✓ Light check — self-declared or from a single source. Not yet independently verified.
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