Bas Van Kranen's Flore Intends To Push Boundaries In Every Way

Forbes

18-07-2025

Flore recently reopened in Amsterdam after an extensive renovation.
Flore, the two-Michelin-starred restaurant by Bas Van Kranen, recently reopened in Amsterdam after an extensive renovation. The new space was designed to reflect the restaurant's conscious dining premise and uses design details to further highlight the ethos of the food. However, Van Kranen intends for Flore to be more than a good meal. He wants it to spark a larger conversation on awareness of what goes on in the dairy industry, ethically sourcing ingredients and the importance of buying local.
If you've ever wondered why Flore has a dairy-free kitchen, well, it's for a larger purpose. 'It's not because we think it's something that is interesting to say,' says Van Kranen in an interview. 'We decided to stop using dairy since the opening of Flore to raise awareness on what's going on in the dairy industry.' While there are farmers who don't give cows hormones or antibiotics, it's only about two to three percent of farmers.
Bas Van Kranen intends for Flore to be more than a good meal.
'It would be too easy to say, 'okay, we can spend the money on buying good milk or buying good cheese',' says Van Kranen. 'It would be an easy way to fix a problem, but I feel like it's more interesting to learn how you can do without.' The restaurant used to use around 2,000 kilos of butter in a good year, with every piece of fish and meat, so taking away dairy has been no easy feat.
He applies the same philosophy to meat and ethically sourcing ingredients, striving to ensure that the meat the restaurant uses doesn't use antibiotics or give the animal sugars. 'When you use an animal, you should be able to use the whole animal,' he says. 'That's why we do it with the lamb, because on a yearly basis, we are able to buy the whole lamb, whereas most restaurants only buy the saddles.' Van Kranen feels that if he can't use the entire animal, then he shouldn't be using it at all. For similar reasons, he won't use beef for the restaurant. 'It's more sensitive because typically the production of beef in Holland doesn't happen in a good way.'
When it comes to sourcing produce, he aims to work with organic farmers around them, opening up a bigger conversation on what's going on in their farms and ensuring they can provide ingredients that the restaurant would also work with. 'Every year, we make a list with crops that we want to try,' he says. 'We do that on a very small scale with ten farmers, and on a yearly basis, they do very small trials. When a trial is interesting and successful, they do it bigger the year after.'
While Van Kranen won't use the word sustainability, he says the point of the restaurant is to ... More entertain and feed people.
While Van Kranen won't use the word sustainability (realistically, running a hotel and restaurant aren't sustainable practices), he says the point of the restaurant is to entertain and feed people. 'For us, what is very important behind the scenes is that we really try to be aware of what we do.' Before the restaurant, Van Kranen just ordered ingredients. Now, he puts thought behind every decision for Flore, and that's ultimately what makes it unique.