Bilder & De Clercq is the new kid on the block

Feb 20, 2013 | by Hannah Fuellenkemper | Food, Photos

About the author

I'm a food stylist, like pugs and doomcore and will buy a book twice if I like the edition. My favourite thing about Amsterdam is its windows and a certain house on the gracht where people read and plans are hatched by candlelight.

Rogier Leopold and Diederik van Gelder have provided a lemon-fresh answer to many an Amsterdammer’s daily dilemma: what to eat tonight? Think of Bilder & De Clercq as a 3D cookbook and use it as your pantry. It’s a place you turn to not merely for inspiration but also, in order to save you the time and loss of soul that would inevitably be suffered at Albert Heijn, the exact ingredients you need to make one of their (tried and tested result: great) recipes. The store officially opened its doors last Saturday.

The new ready meal

How does it work? You go in without knowing what you want to eat tonight. You come out having browsed the fourteen recipe cards, bought the ingredients needed to cook the one of your choice (all recipes can, apparently, be cooked in 30 minutes), clear instructions how to actually cook it and a bottle of wine that’s been paired with your food to drink whilst cooking – or eating. Most of the meals are proportioned for two people, but there are always two choices for those of us who live alone.

Garlic is sold by the clove, carrots individually – you might not want to go here for your general groceries.

If the time of day is such that you’re not yet thinking about what’s for dinner you can sit and drink their single estate coffee (which I gathered to equate to an exceptionally pure taste) and have your cake too. You can also pick up a few treats unrelated to their recipes such as their hand-baked bread, muesli, cookies, crisps, fancier than normal juices and, well, normal milk. However, due to the store’s exacting nature – ‘exact’ as in garlic is sold by the clove, carrots individually and they only sell little gems, handpicked by their personal grocer – you might not want to go here for your general groceries.

Other new stuff

Other notables: each recipe is the creation of one of their two chefs who will be in-store on weekends preparing tasters. Everything is seasonally and locally produced when it can be and all the custom packaging is a part of a social initiative. They stock the first result of frozen yoghurt brand Frozz going retail and have all kinds of plans to involve their customers in the future like invite-only tasting evenings where you’ll have the opportunity to join their chefs in a cooking studio and sample the goodies to come. If you’re not lucky enough to be invited, keep an eye out for their new Facebook app which will allow users to vote on recipes as well as an upcoming competition for the best recipe. Winner gets theirs published, a recipe table of their own and yup – all the ingredients to go with it.