4 - Recognised
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Down to Earth brings together strong practice across four areas of responsible cooking. Vegetables are the whole of the menu: no meat, poultry or fish is served, and the kitchen's identity rests on what it can draw out of a vegetable.
The menu turns with the seasons and with what regional growers have ready, from asparagus in spring to plums picked nearby in summer. Bread, pastry, cheese and beer come from named producers, two of them long standing businesses in Velp itself.
Very little leaves the kitchen as waste: tomato trimmings are concentrated for the bread service and the remaining liquid whipped into a meringue, celeriac skins are roasted into jus, leek tops are crisped as garnish, and asparagus peel becomes ice cream. Drinking water is filtered and poured on site through an EcoTap system in place of bottles.
The restaurant is listed by Dutch Cuisine, holds the gold LEKKER VEGA mark from the Nederlandse Vegetariërsbond, and is a member of Euro-Toques Nederland.
The impact dimensions
Low waste & circular practices✓
Sustainable animal products
Named, traceable suppliers across bread, pastry, cheese, beer, kombucha, juice and produce categories, with regional growers in Limburg and hand-picked fruit nearby.
Named, traceable suppliers are published for bread (Bakker Hilvers, a Velp bakery for around 250 years), pastry (Patisserie Christiaan, also in Velp), cheese (Kaasfort Amsterdam), beer (Brouwerij de Snor, brewed with locally grown grains), kombucha (Wilderland), and juice (Obstkelterei Van Nahmen, pressed from Nederrijn and Münsterland fruit). Independent trade coverage confirms sourcing from regional producers, including specialist asparagus growers in Limburg and hand-picked plums in Elst.
Vegetables carry the menu but growers are not individually named. Part of the beverage list is imported (Manetti coffee, Champagne Taittinger, Fritz-Kola, Jörg Geiger). The demonstrable local share stays below the level 4 band; named vegetable growers would be the single strongest addition.
The menu changes with seasons and regional availability; summer dishes cited include tomato, garden peas, watermelon, grape and aubergine; spring brings asparagus from Limburg growers.
The restaurant states that the menu changes with the seasons and varies with availability of local ingredients and suppliers. Seasonality is a guiding principle published on its site, in its Dutch Cuisine listing and in the Euro-Toques announcement. The chef's menu published at screening is composed of summer produce: tomato, garden peas, watermelon, grape, aubergine.
Independent trade coverage confirms that menus rotate with the seasons, cites spring asparagus from Limburg growers and summer plum foraging in Elst, and describes seasonal research visits to other kitchens. Most dishes change with the season and the kitchen communicates seasonality as a founding idea, meeting level 4. No weekly or daily rotation is published, so level 5 is not reached.
Tomato trimmings concentrated for bread service with remaining liquid whipped into vegan meringue; celeriac skins roasted into jus; leek greens crisped as garnish; asparagus peel becomes ice cream; lemons fermented on site; EcoTap water system replaces bottles.
Independent trade coverage documents a zero waste kitchen through specific named practices: tomato trimmings concentrated into a pulp for bread service with the remaining liquid whipped into a vegan meringue; celeriac skins roasted into a deep jus; leek greens crisped as garnish; fermentation of the kitchen's own salted lemons. A second third party records asparagus peel turned into ice cream.
On plastic and packaging, the restaurant names EcoTap as its water partner, chosen to cut bottled water, and sources drinks from craft and regional producers using returnable glass. Specific practices with named partners are evidenced across two of the three sub areas (food waste, plastic and packaging), with independent corroboration on the first. No energy measure is documented, no measured waste reduction figure is published, and no waste or environmental certification is held, so level 5 is not reached.
Not applicable, the menu is designed fully vegetarian and no meat, poultry, fish or seafood is served on any menu.
The restaurant's menu page and FAQ state that the menu is designed fully vegetarian. Independent trade coverage confirms that no meat, poultry, fish or seafood is served on any menu. Dairy and eggs appear in several courses, but this dimension covers the sourcing and ethics of meat, poultry and seafood. The rubric's not applicable rule applies, and the score is not defaulted to 5. The remaining five dimensions carry the weighted average with weights redistributed proportionally.
EcoTap water partnership donates 36,000 litres annually to orphaned girls and children with albinism in Kenya; local farmer support stated; young team includes trained sous chef and apprentice.
The mission page names EcoTap as the chosen water partner partly because EcoTap donates 36,000 litres of drinking water a year to orphaned girls and children with albinism in Kenya. The page states support for local farmers and producers. Independent trade coverage describes a team in its early twenties working with a trained sous chef and an apprentice.
Under the rubric's entity scope rule, the named cause belongs to the supplier rather than to the restaurant, and is recorded as context without lifting the score. No employment policy, wage commitment, structured apprenticeship or community project run by the restaurant is described in any channel, placing the dimension at level 2. Social practice is structurally under reported online; a restaurant submission is the reliable route to assess it.
Every course on the published chef's menu is built on a vegetable or fruit: confit tomato, ajo blanco, garden peas, watermelon tartare, beetroot from a salt crust, roasted aubergine, fermented banana.
The menu is fully vegetarian by design and every course on the chef's menu published at screening is built on a vegetable or a fruit: confit tomato, ajo blanco, garden peas, watermelon tartare, beetroot from a salt crust, roasted aubergine, fermented banana. The menu page states that dishes consist mainly of local seasonal vegetables, cooked without artificial additives and with as few animal products as possible.
Independent trade coverage frames the kitchen entirely around getting the most out of vegetables and quotes the chef saying the aim is to show what is possible with local vegetables. The Nederlandse Vegetariërsbond lists the restaurant with its gold LEKKER VEGA mark and the Dutch Cuisine listing records it as vegetarian fine dining. Vegetables are unambiguously the centre of the kitchen's identity, no meat, poultry or fish is served, and the positioning is confirmed by independent press and third party listings, meeting level 5.
Sourcing signals
Independent trade coverage names specific in house categories: stocks drawn from celeriac skins, garnishes crisped from leek greens, a pulp and a meringue made from tomato trimmings, and fermentation of salted lemons. The restaurant names dips made in house, and asparagus peel ice cream.
