At Stadsjochies in Utrecht you eat between the ingredients that you will find on your plate later

We are instinctively not yet out of the city, when we are suddenly terribly out of the city. Through the Vogelnamenbuurt, under the busy Waterlinieweg and around the corner from the FC Utrecht stadium Galgenwaard, there appears to be a bridge behind which suddenly the countryside begins: nothing but fields, trees, horses and sheep. And a huge greenhouse, because that’s where restaurant Stadsjochies is located – that’s why they call it a ‘kastaurant’, but there is a limit to playful catering names, even for me.

It is the most luxuriant time of the year in the garden, all the plants are thick in the fresh leaves and flowers come in all colors. In the herb troughs along which we walk to the sun-drenched terrace, there are metre-long, toddler-high rosemary bushes and frugal forests of huacatay (fragrant Peruvian mint, very en vogue on restaurant signs). In the greenhouse, beans are guided upwards and we see flowers as far as the eye can see. The 1.6-hectare area was taken over a few years ago by an IT professional who came by by chance when he was looking for a place to park his camper. He started growing vegetables and herbs in the old greenhouses and sold them to the Utrecht catering industry. Later, two others joined, the whole place was renovated and the greenhouses replaced, and the restaurant opened. The boss’s sons were amazed: could courgettes get that big? And carrots… do they grow underground? “Yeah, really those city kids,” Dad grumbled, “who have yet to learn where their food comes from.” Hence the name.

Meanwhile we are spinning on the terrace, from where you can smell the large herb and tea garden and where we ordered a fine blond beer that the restaurant brews itself. The menu changes with the offer from the greenhouse and garden, there is a choice between three to six courses. The flowers are also at their best on all tables; purple borage here, lupine there, and beautiful flowering dill here. The wine list is short and affordable, and we get a nice sandwich with good butter and a bouquet of super fresh herbs around it.

Full cycle

We see how the chefs in the large kitchen constantly let the people in the service taste everything – I always think that is a good sign. Still, the young waitresses and waiters struggle to get dishes with the correct description on the table. It starts with the amuse-bouche, a blanc manger (milk pudding) of cauliflower with flaxseed and almond granola. The waitress: ‘We have a blanquette here with a quinoa on it!’ At the cheese board, the waiter misidentifies all four cheeses (‘this is a kind of brie, and that’s… also a kind of brie’), and only when we ask where that cheese comes from, does it turn out that they all come from from the Oudwijker cheese factory, only five kilometers to the south – don’t you add that? It doesn’t really bother you because everyone is cheerful and friendly, but it is a bit of a missed opportunity for a restaurant that is justifiably proud of its hyper-local product.

The great thing about cooking with vegetables that you grow yourself, as many vegetable gardeners also know, is that you can experience the full life cycle of the plant and can therefore also use non-regular parts in the kitchen. We get a fresh starter of young turnips and snake radish marinated as ceviche. The latter does not concern, as the waitress tells us, an elongated brand of underground tubers, but the above-ground ‘hatts’ or pods that grow from a radish plant that you let shoot through. They taste crispy, vegetarian and spicy, very nice with the ketchup-like sauce of nasturtiums and the lemon-like marigolds. The marinated tuber is a little tart, as if it was not tossed in raw marinade but cooked in the lime juice, which loses its freshness.

Then there are tasty young beets with a nice floral-fresh vinaigrette of elderflower and dill, curd with dill flower, beetroot cream, fried beet chips, cornflower and mustard flour. And thank goodness it’s not called ‘beet preparations’! The flowers really take center stage in the dish, rather than just serving as a garnish, and the whole thing is super vibrant, sizzling simple and delicious. The onion dish is also pleasing, with a grilled fresh pink onion, a light, soubise-like sauce, fried palm cabbage, crispy roasted spelled and egg yolk: a very luxurious and very complete vegetarian dish.

The vegetarian main course is also well put together: very young roasted carrots and fried polenta are in a rather intense, deeply sweet carrot gravy with fenugreek, white wine and bay leaf. Some fresh curcuma curd, marigold and huacatay complete the plate: the orange-yellow plate looks extremely cosy. For the carnivore, there is a Moroccan-inspired dish with a piece of excellent braised shoulder of lamb, broad beans, turnip and olive crumbs, and also a lot of candied lemon and olive in the gravy. Serve with a spoonful of delicious buttery mashed potatoes.

Nice try

Only the dessert is a disappointment. It is licorice ice cream with frog-green foam of fennel, a cremeux of white chocolate and fennel and meringues with some salmiak salt in it. The idea of ​​a dessert with these licorice flavors is very nice, but the whole thing just doesn’t come together because there is no acid in the dessert as a much-needed contrast, making it all together very sweet (and a little bit salty). The meringues are eggy and bland. Nice try, but this one has to go back to the drawing board.

All in all, however, Stadsjochies is a very nice place to escape the city for a while. Both conceptually and culinary, this cheerful nursery eatery is very well put together.