Restaurant openings worth a train ticket this autumn

Restaurant openings worth a train ticket this autumn sit outside the Randstad, in Apeldoorn, Groningen, Zuid-Limburg, Enschede and Breda.

Five restaurant openings to book

In Apeldoorn, chef Jacob Jan Boerma returns to the city where he grew up. He sold his three-Michelin-star De Leest, in nearby Vaassen, in 2021; on 15 September he opens Krijt, a 40-seat room on Hoofdstraat, in the former De Wilde Pieters space. Chef Edwin Franken runs the kitchen day to day; Boerma and his partner Kim Veldman stay on as owners and mentors.

None of these five needed an Amsterdam address to fill a room.

Groningen gets Bistro Bar Louis this autumn, in the roughly 500-square-metre space on Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat left empty when Louis XV closed. Bart Mulder, who owns Bistro Boys and co-owns Bar Barrie, opens it with 23-year-old chef Dani Bakker in a room built for more than 120 guests. The menu is French-modern, built around single main courses rather than the shared plates Mulder serves next door.

Two hours further south, in the Limburg hamlet of Reijmerstok, Hans van Wolde opens a third address before the year is out. Van Wolde, named Chef of the Year at the 2026 Gault&Millau awards for his two-Michelin-star Brut172, bought café A Gen Ing with his longtime maître Viva Vroemen; the new venue, Silt, serves breakfast, lunch and dinner at café prices.

Enschede's opening arrived earlier in the year and has had a summer to settle in. Tim Staal and Marijn Waanders opened Bistro Bleu on Van Lochemstraat on 1 May; Michelin added it to the guide in August for a cordon bleu built from Mechelen chicken, Twente ham and Le Petit Durovael cheese, cut and fried to order.

Breda's newest, ORA Taverna & Bar, swaps the bistro register for Greek. Charlotte and Vasilios Papadopoulos opened it on Nieuwe Ginnekenstraat in March, with about 40 wines by the glass and a menu built around shared plates: tzatziki with smoked yoghurt, braised beef cheek with orzo.

Why chefs are leaving the city

None of this is charity. A 40-seat room in Apeldoorn costs a fraction of an address in Amsterdam-Zuid, and several cooks behind this year's restaurant openings trained under star chefs before moving within an hour of home. Boerma calls Krijt a chance to mentor a new generation rather than chase a fourth star; Van Wolde is doing much the same at a lower price than Brut172 — the instinct behind Dublin's Glovers Alley, reopened this year under its own chef.

The Michelin Guide Netherlands hands out its next stars at the MECC in Maastricht on 5 October, a short drive from Reijmerstok — one more sign that these restaurant openings no longer need an Amsterdam postcode to matter.