Dinner at Restaurant Taste! in Tilburg

Restaurant Taste! is one of the best restaurants in my hometown Tilburg. The first time I went to Taste! was when I still lived in Amsterdam and just started dating my boyfriend who already lived in Tilburg. I checked thefork.nl (previously Iens) and found out that Restaurant Taste! was the highest ranked restaurant in Tilburg.
It’s been almost 5 year since that first visit and I didn’t write about Taste! on my blog yet, so it was time for another dinner at Restaurant Taste! in Tilburg so that I could tell you all about it and share the pictures of our delicious dishes.

Restaurant Taste! is located at the basement of the Mercure Hotel in the middle of the city centre of Tilburg. It might be easy to walk pass it, or you might have mixed feelings bout it being in a basement, but it’s actually very nicely decorated and illuminated. They have stylish blue chairs and several plants. It gives a warm and cosy feel.

Restaurant Taste! in Tilburg has a semi-open kitchen, so you can see how chef Marc Bierkens and his team are working hard to create the dishes for you. There’s no menu at Taste!, you just choose 1 up to 6 courses and tell your dietary requests to the waiter. You can go for this Chef’s Taste, or for a complete experience you book the Taste it all at Taste! Menu where you get 3 to 6 courses and bubbles to start with, matching wines or beers with every course, a bottle of water and coffee or tea after your meal.

I asked for a vegetarian menu, and it was really well taken into account. The amuse bouche were already vegetarian for me. You can see them at the top of this page; it’s a cremeux with piccalilly, a cauliflower cream with mustard seed and a crispy brioche with watermelon and grilled egg yolk. After that we got this semifreddo with white chocolate, wasabi, granite and a gin-tonic pearl.

I got a vegetarian ‘tartare’ as a dish; made from tomatoes instead of beef. Furthermore this tomato tartare was served with pickled plums, an avocado cream, shortly roasted avocado and tomberries which are small tomatoes.
Sommelier Kees Verlaan served matching wines with each dish and told us why it was such a great combination and where the wine came from. Taste even has its own wine; a German Riesling wine.

Click here to read why Germany is the wine country of this year.

As a main dish I got vegetarian fregola with truffle. Fregola is a type of pasta that comes from Sardinia. It was served with green asparagus, a shiitake polenta, apricot cream and an oil made from rocket. It was super tasty, and not only because I’m such a big fan of truffle. The flavors and textures were really well balanced.

Probably my favorite culinary word is ‘pre-dessert’. How lovely is it that you get a little dessert before your dessert? This pre-dessert at Taste! is made with apricot, fresh ice cream, a crispy structure made from honey.

And after the pre-dessert it was, of course, time for the actual dessert. Very seasonal and fitting for summer we got this dessert with strawberry mousse and yogurt mousse, strawberries, rhubarb, a gel and meringue from red beets and a crispy coconut flake.

Click here to reserve your dinner at Restaurant Taste! Tilburg