Gabriel Verheij: More. Butter. Please.

By Andy Fenner

Gabriel Verheij is my favourite type of chef. The type who is obsessed with learning. The type who collects knowledge, like kitchen knives. The type who has no problem rolling his sleeves up and jumping into various kitchens, with various head chefs, various cooking philosophies, various hierarchical structures and various cooking techniques. This willingness to learn, in my experience, often breeds far better chefs than fancy cooking schools with fancy certificates. It allows a chef to develop a broad skill set, with hands-on experience of having worked at various stations within a professional environment. Real pressure, real expectations and real lessons.

When I ask Gab if he can pin down a moment when he knew that cooking could be a career he pauses. “My cooking career started when I was 20, I suppose,” he says, before adding “but I was completely lost at the time. I had fucked up two attempts at studying and I was struggling. I didn’t really know what the plan was.”

“So, there was no plan?” I push.

“It was a side hustle. That’s it. I was working as a waiter in my hometown but hospitality never really seemed like a real job.”

This is a common challenge for the industry – a feeling that hospitality is a last resort. A place that people come to when nothing else has worked out. I ask him if this was, indeed how feeling.

“Totally. People looked down at you if you were there. Like, you must have sucked at everything else.”j

With refreshing honesty, Gab tells me that he sort-of did suck at everything else. What’s more, he sucked at cooking.

“My story is not a Netflix show,” he laughs. “One day at work a chef was sick. They needed someone to step up and fill in. That someone was me.”

What Gab did not know – what nobody knew – was that this moment would change his life. And that this moment would be the moment when arguably one of Amsterdam’s most exciting chefs found answers to a whole bunch of internal questions.

“I left the kitchen that night knowing that something was different. I was going to do this for the rest of my life.”

If I ever meet the dude who was sick that night, I’ll buy him a beer. We all should. Because – when he bailed on his shift – he set in motion a series of events that would see Gab grinding his way through the kitchen for three years as a permanent member, before moving on to Tollius and ending up at the highly-acclaimed Rijks.

He tells me he was “sucking less” by now but clearly he’s being modest. Something had clicked. He was on an upward trajectory and people seemed to notice. His good friend George Kataras had recently left Rijks to open Vandereveen and had asked Gab to come on over. Kataras was unapologetically aiming for a Michelin star and Gab was the man he chose to help him get one.

*Spoiler alert, they got one.

Under Kataras, Gab worked with ingredients he loved and respected, breaking down whole fish, portioning meat primals and handling vegetables with a level of care and attention that he continues to practice today. The cooking techniques at Vanderveen were transformatory for Gab too, with a particular fascination of cooking on open flame. To fire up a BBQ is to strip out so many safety nets and there is obvious appeal to a chef who is up for the challenge. It is an instinctual, primal way of cooking.

“My desire to learn about cooking on fire is a big driver for me. It was then, and it is now.”

Gab would leave Vanderveen, looking to “explore the road of cooking independently, specifically with an eye on re-examining comfort food.”

That exploration has seen Gab knock out some of the best bite-for-bite food I have had in Amsterdam. Food that is honest, unpretentious and balanced. Food that is influenced from a wild mix of cultures and culinary context and food that is somehow perfectly balanced, even with big flavours and seasonings that often overpower. Under his brand, Butterboys Club – sprinkling his magic over venues like KID, Bar Du Champagne, Kikkie and Bottleshop – he has worked both as a consultant and as a pop-up collaborator. It has been amazing and inspiring to watch a young chef mature, with a clear vision and philosophy seeming to galvanise with each chapter, in what is becoming a very fun, very delicious story.

This approach has been given the highly technical term “helping out the homies”. It’s part of what I love about this dude – a genuine desire to simply cook and serve exciting food. “It’s fun but consultancy is not the direction I want to go in. I just like seeing people reach their potential and I want to play a part in any friends’ vision.”

So, what is the actual vision?

“Currently, I’m working as the chef for a company that’s doing catering and set design on a high level, where we combine food with architecture with art, concepts and more. The company is called Copain and we have big plans and big dreams.”

Those big dreams seem to include “a massive building in the North which would be a dream come true.”

I have my fingers crossed it does come off. But I know that if it doesn’t, something else will. Talent like this finds a way. It always does.