For about a month or two, we have extra company in our office garden (where, by the way, there are very few plants for something that ends with ‘garden’), because a new platform was secretly being built there; FavorFlav.com.

Favor Flav (pronounced as Feevour Fleev) is a food site with a cool edge. They write about real chefs and are not afraid of a thick sauce. All this under the steaming leadership of Marcus Polman. Yes, you do know him, that's ‘the one from MasterChef’ and ‘the one from De Perfecte Kok’. Reason to roll out our pink carpet for our new colleague.

Marcus, yesterday was the launch of your website. There was the tastiest pear cider I ever drank, vodka cocktails were served (is gin still a thing in foodieland?) and there was Amsterdam-brewed beer. Did you start your day with an anti-hangover breakfast?

‘Especially the vodka cocktails with pickles and Amsterdam sparkling water hit hard at the end of the evening. My remedy the next morning is very classic: fried egg with crispy bacon and melted aged cheese on toast with butter and a double espresso. I fry my egg in olive oil instead of butter and on quite high heat. Then you get a nice crispy edge around your egg – a must for a successful fried egg in my opinion.’

And what time does the first alcoholic drink go into the glass to celebrate that it's the weekend?

‘I fear it will be around five o'clock soon.’

Do you have that old-fashioned Thank God It’s Friday feeling or is your work too enjoyable for that? And maybe it doesn't even stop on Friday around five o'clock...

‘My work goes on seven days a week. This coming weekend I will be in the studio for the first recordings of a new season of MasterChef. I always try to keep Saturday free. Football, food shopping, and cooking and eating with my family and friends.’

What does a Favor Flav cook on Friday night? Or is there just a plain thuisbezorgd.nl typed in?

‘I have a subscription to a grocery box, Hello Fresh. On Monday we get a box with fresh ingredients and recipes for the whole week. Tortilla with mackerel and tomato salsa, noodles with curry, or a stew with sausage. Simple dishes. But always with fresh ingredients and it’s on the table within thirty minutes. Ideal. By the way, my partner cooks more often than I do, she can cook well. She is the weekday cook, I am the show cook for the weekend.’

Saturday. Does that go from organic market via elite butcher to wine paradise? Take me along, what does this day look like for you?

‘I start at my favorite custom butcher in the village: Chateaubriand in Heemstede. There I buy a nice côte de boeuf, dry-aged for five weeks, in their own dry-aged cabinet. They also have fantastic homemade charcuterie. My favorites are pickled Zeeland bacon and coarse calf liver sausage with a mixture of calf liver, pork belly, and red wine. Then I quickly walk out of the store with two bags.

Sometimes I take the car and go to Haarlemmerdijk, the nicest food street in the Netherlands. Buying olive oil at Manfred Meeuwig and cheese at Caulis, a nice Manchego or a Vacherin Mont d’Or for a mini cheese fondue. And then a stop at Ibericus, the famous Spanish ham shop for a crispy sandwich with Iberico ham and tomato-garlic salsa. Then to the Noordermarkt for a selection of mushrooms from Portobello (just sauté in butter with parsley, garlic, and fresh red pepper, and then on toasted bread) and a quick visit to Jonah Freud from De Kookboekhandel to see what new cookbooks are available. For my bread, I go to Le Fournil de Sébastien in Amsterdam-Zuid. They bake traditional French baguettes there, I don’t know any baker who makes better baguettes. Superior croissants but also divine madeleines. No wonder there’s a long line outside every Saturday. And then a quick stop at the wine shop in my village.’

And what will be cooked this weekend?

‘First a lavish snack table with the spoils of the day. And then in the evening the côte de boeuf with a fresh homemade bearnaise sauce. Lettuce with good olive oil and oven-baked potatoes with rosemary and garlic. Simple but good. For dessert a lemon/meringue tart with coffee.’

If earthly matters like time difference, money, and flight time didn't exist, what would your ideal weekend look like?t? Anything goes, from breakfast at your favorite place in Paris to dinner at Roberta’s in Brooklyn...

‘Breakfast at the Ritz Carlton in New York. I love having an extensive breakfast in international luxury hotels (tip: Sunday morning breakfast at Waldorf Astoria in Amsterdam, you can also go there if you’re not staying overnight). Then a tapas lunch at the bar in Mercado de la Boqueria, the bustling food market in Barcelona. I’ll have dinner at Fäviken chef Magnus Nilsson in his remote cabin with twenty seats in desolate Northern Sweden, where he cooks with only local ingredients. I’ll sleep and wake up in Berlin, in the most beautiful loft you can find on Airbnb. Sunday eating ceviche at Martin Morales in London, the godfather of Peruvian cuisine, and in the evening heading to Paris for Le Chateaubriand, the best bistro-new-style in Paris.‘

And tell me, what are your favorite restaurants in the Netherlands?

‘For my work, I eat a lot in new places. But when I go out to eat privately, I prefer to fall back on the old favorites. Restaurants that have been around for decades with the same chefs who know what they are doing and stand for honest no-nonsense cuisine, such as Toscanini and Bordewijk in Amsterdam. My most recent best dining experience in a new place is Kaagman & Kortekaas in Amsterdam, run by two guys who – not entirely coincidentally – previously worked at Toscanini and Bordewijk. Great food and a nice atmosphere, it’s full every evening. They received a 9+ on Favor Flav. Also nice: Nel Schellekens from De Gulle Waard in Winterswijk, a tough female chef who specializes in nose-to-tail dishes. Blood sausage, chicken livers, free-range chickens, that kind of thing.’

You must have a culinary bucket list. Where do you still want to eat in this life?

‘I really want to make a food trip to China. From dining in the international top restaurants in Shanghai and Hong Kong, including Richard Ekkebus, to tasting the best street food stalls. And then looking in the kitchens of Chinese chefs and learning how they make classics. For example, learning to prepare a traditional Peking duck from A to Z.’