SERGIO HERMAN STARTS MUSSEL RESTAURANT IN ZEEBRUGGE

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: Sergio Herman starts mussel restaurant in Zeebrugge.

Sergio Herman can't sit still: he is starting a mussel restaurant in Zeebrugge on July 1, together with chef Syrco Bakker. Not much is known yet, but we do know that Sergio has a love-hate relationship with mussels.

Chef Sergio has a gap in his schedule since partner Nick Bril bought him out of The Jane, the prestigious restaurant in Antwerp, a few weeks ago. He went on a nice vacation to Ibiza with his new love and is busy with the Frites Ateliers and La Pristine, his new place in Antwerp, but still: the chef probably finds himself doing nothing more often than he likes. Is that why he is starting a pop-up restaurant with his colleague Syrco Bakker?

‘Fuck, here we go again’
Oud Sluis, where Sergio Herman's illustrious career began, was originally a mussel restaurant. Father Ronny Herman was in the kitchen at the time, teenage Sergio had to prepare liters of mussel sauce in the kitchen and drag the jute sacks of mussels to the cooler.

Not a task he looks back on with nostalgia, as he reveals in his book L’amour des Moules: ‘Even before the season started, we received many calls with the same horror question: ‘Are there already mussels?’ I thought: oh no, fuck, here we go again! I went crazy from that question, it made me aggressive. When the season actually started, my stomach completely knotted up: it really gave me a shitty feeling. I knew those mussels provided a good income, but I just didn’t feel like it at all anymore.’

Somersault
Still, Sergio is now starting a temporary mussel restaurant together with his colleague Syrco. The men will start on July 1. Convenient for the chef, as the restaurant is in Zeebrugge, just a somersault away from his apartment.

Source: De Morgen