AMSTERDAM, April 24 — In the flood of initiatives undertaken by restaurateurs around the world in a bid to keep their businesses afloat, the Michelin-starred chef at the Rijksmuseum restaurant in Amsterdam has come up a scheme that surely ranks as one of the most unusual: A four-hands dinner concocted with a foreign guest chef, which will be distributed as takeout. The gourmet diners will then have to follow a live presentation with the two celebrity cooks to add the finishing touches themselves. 

Four-hands dinners are all the rage these days, especially in the refined world of gourmet restaurants, where celebrity chefs frequently join forces with colleagues from other culinary horizons to create eagerly awaited collaborative menus. However, with the Covid-19 pandemic, these remarkable moments of gourmet sharing have become next to impossible given that most restaurant dining rooms have been closed to prevent the spread of the virus. 

Now the Michelin-starred chef at the restaurant of Amsterdam’s most famous art museum has come up with an original solution. Having already gone back to work in his kitchen to produce takeout menus, Joris Bijdendijk decided to add an extra touch of excitement on Sunday, April 26, with a menu concocted in collaboration with Manoella Buffara, the chef of the MANU restaurant in Curitiba, Brazil. The two cooks have invited their customers to follow a live presentation on their respective Instagram accounts at 7pm (Dutch time) in which they will explain how to add the final details to the collaborative meal. 

Priced at €55, the menu brings together dishes that are typical of both chefs, with cauliflower, a mussel and confit onion sauce by Manoella Buffara, and a legendary dessert with passion fruit, coconut and buttermilk by Joris Bijdendijk. There is also an alternative six-plate menu for hearty eaters at €75. Internet users can also add drinks and other delights to their orders, including whole-grain bread, sausage with fennel and curried cashews. 

Bijdendijk is already preparing another online four-hands experiment with Moscow chef Anatoly Kazakov, which will go ahead on May 2 and 3. — AFP-Relaxnews