Flashback: 'He understood where I wanted to go'
Jonnie Boer (54) owns restaurant De Librije in Zwolle. The three-star chef met teacher and practical teacher Willy Otto as a nineteen-year-old student in Amsterdam. He liked that lump from the east.
Picture: Fred van Diem
“I didn't have to learn the love for food, flavors and pure ingredients, because they were brought up at the spoon. Firstly, because my grandfather was a freshwater fisherman and I was introduced to things like eel and pike and how to catch them at a young age.
In addition, my appreciation for fair food was stimulated because my parents ran a café-restaurant in Giethoorn. There was simple, but oh so well cooked. Some people will not easily think of it with a top chef, but I still strive for simplicity in the kitchen. By that I mean: the use of pure, honest ingredients from nearby nature. It offers us so many fantastic flavors that you can safely let those vegetables, herbs, meat or fish speak for themselves. As a chef, I want to do justice to the real taste, instead of messing around with it too much. That is not necessary at all.
My father taught me a lot about nature. As a kid I was almost impossible to turn off De Wieden, a swamp area in the Kop van Overijssel. I put out fish traps from my boat before school and after school I wandered around looking for edible plants and herbs. When the end of high school approached, I had no clear-cut plans for the future. If I could have spent the rest of my life fishing, poaching and wandering in nature, I would have been fine then. My father put a stop to this and said: Either you are going to work or you are going to learn a trade. I chose the cooking training in Groningen. I did not yet have great ambitions in the culinary field.
After this school I continued my education in Amsterdam, where I became an apprentice chef. First at a star restaurant, where I was introduced to the refined cuisine. Very educational, although I was still allowed to do little else than, so to speak, peeling potatoes six days a week. But of course I took a good look around me and saw what I did not want: working with broken vegetables and with supplemented animals from the middlemen. At home everything was pure nature and you prefer to catch and pick everything yourself. I really missed that in the city.
After that I was apprenticed to Willy Otto in restaurant Rosarium in the Amstelpark. He was a teacher in the cookery school and a chef. With him in the kitchen I had the opportunity to show what I could do. He saw something in that lump from the east, and that gave me tremendous confidence. He strengthened my belief that fresh ingredients make a world of difference in the kitchen. At the time, 'fresh' and 'local' were not yet culinary recommendations. In short, it was only chic when it came from afar. I arrived with a bunch of water mint that I had picked in De Wieden. But that tasted much better than the expensive bunch of mint from the supplier.
Willy Otto understood where I wanted to go and encouraged me to find this, then unusual, way in the kitchen. You can have talent and will, but a teacher who gives you confidence and the space to experiment is very important at a young age. I think that applies to all study programs and we should really cherish such teachers. "
Willy Otto (71)
“I immediately noticed Jonnie. You noticed the difference with city students, who had much less connection with nature. To them, a pheasant was a pheasant, whether it had been bred or had been roaming around in the wild. Jonnie didn't understand much of that. He always remained himself in everything and everyone liked him, from cleaner to bobo. ”
