On the second floor of the Moxy/Residence Inn Hotel on Danzigerkade, you look across the IJ while eating. Not the most obvious spot for a Michelin-starred restaurant, you might think, but Lars fits in better than it sounds. The panorama is wide, the space quiet, and the distance from the city gives it something you rarely find in the busy city center: silence while you eat.
Behind Lars are chef Lars Scharp and Floor Wiggers, who founded the restaurant in 2018. Scharp cooks using classic French techniques as a base, but emphatically draws Asian lines through them. This is no embellishment: ponzu, wasabi, sesame, kalamansi and curry pop up throughout the menu, not as an exotic note but as a structural part of the dishes. The combination works because Scharp takes his premise seriously. In addition to Lars, Scharp and Wiggers also run Cachet in Badhoevedorp, their sister restaurant.
The three menus are each a world of their own. The Lars Experience (five or six courses) is the introduction: think Kingfish with kalamansi, peanut and celery, or North Sea Crab with white asparagus, rhubarb and vanilla almond. Lamb with wild garlic, morels and lemon closes the savory line. The Lars Exclusive (eight courses) continues: oysters with ponzu, lobster with peanut, cilantro and curry, and a course with caviar, smoked eel and crème fraîche. The finale with Wagyu A5, wasabi and ponzu shows how Scharp brings those two cuisines together without getting messy.
Ponzu, wasabi, sesame, kalamansi and curry pop up throughout the menu, not as an exotic note but as a structural part of the dishes.
The Houthavens is a neighborhood that has changed a lot in recent years: new construction, water, and an infrastructure that is not quite up to scratch. Lars sits there as a quiet anchor, with the IJ as a constant backdrop. The roof garden on top, the view from the dining room, the kitchen that follows season: it suits a neighborhood that is itself searching for what it wants to be.