Chef Thor

Chef Thor: De bitterbal op wereldreis

17 Jan 2010

Datum: 15-01-2010 Door: Irene de Vette

Herkenbaar vrijdagmiddagscenario: na het tweede biertje wordt gretig op de schaal met bitterballen aangevallen. De vegetarische collega moet het doen met een lullige kaasstengel. Maar steeds vaker is er ook een beter alternatief. Neem bijvoorbeeld de bitterballen van Chef Thor, waar de vleesetende borrelaars zeker ook op gaan azen.

Mobiel eten
Op de Horecava, ’s lands grootste horecabeurs, liep SpecialBite tegen Chef Thor en zijn ‘world of bites’ aan. Geïntrigeerd door uiterlijk (gespikkelde bitterballen?) en naam ( Popeye?) ook maar meteen de tanden in zo’n vegetarische bitterbal gezet. Conclusie: je brandt je mond net zo hard, maar wat zijn ze lekker!

Chef Thor, dat klinkt een beetje als Kapitein Iglo. Maar anders dan de bebaarde kindervriend blijkt er hier wél een echt persoon achter de snack te zitten: chef-kok Thorwald Voss, ook wel bekend als “Mr. Kroket”. Die ooit, 25 jaar geleden, de SupperClub oprichtte. Aan die tijd heeft hij een voorliefde voor finger food overgehouden.

Nadat Thorwald voor zichzelf was begonnen ging hij volop experimenteren met kroketten. ‘Mobiel eten’, noemt hij het. “Ik zie het omhulsel eigenlijk als bord en bestek.” Hij bedacht de ‘liefdeskroket’, met béchamel van Escoffier, kappertjes, knoflook. Iedere hap een andere smaak. Voor Club 13 in Barcelona ontwikkelde hij het menu, met daarop vijf verschillende kroketten. Al zijn reis- en werkervaringen in Azië, Afrika en Europa stopte hij in zijn bites.

Elke dag een bal
Op dit moment heeft Chef Thor vier varianten. De Torri Jappi (Japanse terriyaki bechamel met verse mango en gember), de Coco Thai (Thaise kokoscurry met jonge erwtjes en bieslook), de Popeye (bladspinazie met gorgonzola en parmezaan) en de Baladin (houmous met peterselie en verse munt). Elke twee maanden komt er een nieuwe ‘bite’ bij. Op dit moment is Thor nog bezig met een roerei-truffelbal en een Baltibal, een Pakistaanse curry-bite. Inspiratie heeft de chef genoeg. “Zolang ik leef kan ik elke dag een bal maken. Heb ik zin in hutspot, dan maak ik daar een bal mee. Of eentje met erwtensoep.”

Enge vleesvervangers komen niet eens in de buurt van de ballen, maar ze hebben net als een gemiddelde Kwekkenboom- of Van Dobbenbal genoeg ‘bite’. Chef Thor: “In de Supperclub liet ik al steeds vaker vlees en vis helemaal weg, zonder dat iemand het eigenlijk merkte. Dat is voor mij een grote uitdaging."

My Husband Went to Amsterdam, and All I Got…

15 Nov 2009

...was this flyer for the ultimate kroket.

Now, if you know anything about Dutch food, especially the kind of Dutch food made for drunk people, you know that “ultimate kroket” is kind of a paradox.

A kroket is a little deep-fried wad of…stuff. Misc. goo. I’m not sure what it is, or what it once was. They’re in the category of borrelhapjes, literally the little bites you have with your glass of gin, so really, the flavor isn’t too important–you’re just out to protect your liver. A few years ago, I trailed at the one Dutch restaurant in NYC (now closed), and the poor non-Dutch chef who’d just taken over reserved a special expression of horror for the krokets he was obliged to make. He didn’t really know what was in the goo, either.

Anyway, done right, they’re deep-fried so they’re, like all fine food, crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. In fact, the middle is usually like liquid napalm, and if you’re drunk and eat one without letting it cool, you will suffer terrible burns all over your mouth, and thus feel even more regret for your boozing than if you just had the normal pain of a hangover. If you’re sober and eat one…well, you wouldn’t eat one if you’re sober.

So, what I’m getting at is that the kroket is really not something anyone would think to improve on, because you only think about krokets if you’ve been drinking (and if you wear a tracksuit and gold chains and come from Alkmaar), and then you think they’re perfectly good.

But someone had a vision. Some guy named Thorwald Voss. He happens to have been the original genius behind Supper Club, back when Supper Club was really crazy and cool and not an international chain of sort-of-crazy-and-cool clubs (and, I assume, the inspiration for Monkeytown in Williamsburg).

Now the guy is making krokets. (Which makes me wonder just what happened there behind the scenes at Supper Club…that’s a long way to fall.)

But they’re not just any kroket. They’re “Thor’s Love Croquet [sic...in fact, sic galore from here on out]“:

Every bite a different taste: bechamel, cream cheese, onion, marmalade, nutmeg, hot chili sauce, japanees ginger, artisjok, capers, japanees bread crumbs, sunflower oil, frying pan, lots of love.

In short, Thor has taken the kroket-for-drunks and made it into the kroket-for-stoners. As Peter says, it’s like the Everlasting Gobstopper of krokets: each bite is another flavor, just as the flyer promises.

As for the other promise on the flyer, the cryptic “Stop thinkin,” I’m not sure what to make of that. The kroket seems to be thinking it. But then it’s thinking. So it hasn’t stopped. Dude. You could think about that for hours.

And there’s more thought-provoking material on the back of the flyer:
There have been made 100,000 of these croquets by hand. The recepie changes everytime. A piece of art is never finished. The thought that everything is a thought, is a thought that can be thoughtless thought about. This has been approved by scientists. Let’s try and get conscious of are unconsciousnees.”

Whoa. Are those the same “scientists” that made the Future Protein vegetarian snacks from the previous posts? And is he suggesting these krokets also have a layer of LSD in them? This really, really makes me wonder what happened at Supper Club.

THORWALD VOSS: Hey, everybody, if we all take our shoes off and eat on beds, and people feed us hash brownies, and someone swings on a trapeze, then we’ll get conscious of are unconsciousnees, yes? Wait, maybe hash krokets would be cooler…

TV’S BUSINESS PARTNERS, AKA WANNABE CORPORATE STICKS-IN-THE-MUD: Uh, yeah, but the customers might also be unconscious of the check. Have fun with your krokets, Thor.

But who’s got the last laugh? Supper Club is now a sort-of cool place that’s losing edginess credibility at the same rate it’s expanding around the globe, but Thor is selling his mind-expanding krokets at summer festivals in Amsterdam for 5 EUROS A PIECE. This is a 500% markup on your standard kroket. And people are buying them, and talking about them. Rod said to Peter, “Dude, there’s the 5-euro kroket guy. You HAVE to try one of them.” (I paraphrase.) His reputation as the kroket/croquet master, nay, kroket guru precedes him.

Rock your krokets, Thor. One day soon I too will be in Amsterdam, and I will be eating your kroket and thinking that everything is a thought. Or not thinking. Or something. Dude.

Thor's Bites!

15 Nov 2009

Long ago, I started an email correspondence with a man who wanted me to taste his balls.

I know, these guys are a dime a dozen on the web, but this one was special–it was the estimable Chef Thorwald Voss, one of the founders of the Supperclub. I’ve written about him before, but on this last Amsterdam trip, I finally got to meet the man in question. And taste those lovely, lovely balls. (Peter wasn’t in town yet.)

I biked down to Chef Thor’s workspace, a big industrial kitchen/dining room in the former Sportlife gum factory, which has now been turned into a sort of hip food/design office block. I’d always wanted to go in the Sportlife factory, but now this is the closest I will have ever come.

When I got there, Chef Thor was in the middle of devising a new falafel-inspired Bite.


Exotic Eastern Love Bites in the lab

I can’t tell you what’s in there–it’s proprietary. But one of the cool things about Thor’s Bites–that I admit I didn’t really appreciate at first–is that they’re totally vegetarian. Apparently, a lot of Dutch vegetarians are very tortured over standard bitterballen, because, I mean, c’mon, they are the ideal snack to go with beer…but they always have weird little bits of meat in them, vaguely. Basically, not enough meat to really identify, but enough to doom your veggie convictions. Anyway, the falafel-ish Bite has a Mid East vibe, but is still very distinctly a Dutch bitterbal.

(If you have no idea what a bitterbal is, it’s just a mini-croquette. If you have no idea why a whole nation would get so excited about such a thing, well, I can’t help you. Just try one yourself. But let them cool off a bit after they come out of the fryer. The go in the middle can be extremely dangerous.)

I also got to see the end product: Bites in their little freezer boxes, ready for dispensing to caterers and bars. Seeing how I first heard of Chef Thor from a hand-scrawled flyer advertising his Wonka-like croquettes, I really had no idea the guy was running such a slick operation now. Thor’s Bites are all made in a factory kitchen somewhere that starts with a G (I cannot find my damn notebook–I’m working completely on the details of the day that were seared on my brain!).


Chef Thor pulls it out

Even more fascinating: Thor’s Bites are constructed largely from prefab products. Did you know that there are crumbs made just for coating bitterballen, available in bags big enough to hold several small children? I did not.

Chef Thor dropped a selection of Bites in the deep-fryer, which just happened to be one of the most adorable appliances I’ve ever seen. Chef Thor said he found the old gal (brand name: Princess) on the street. Doesn’t she look like the maid in the Jetsons?


World's cutest deep-fryer

Sadly, I was too busy eating the molten-lava-love of the Bites to take any photos. I think I like the spinach-and-cheese ones best, although that ginger-teriyaki combo was pretty savory as well. This sounds nouvelle, but the genius of them, as with the falafel flavor, is that they are still deep down a bitterbal, a blob of goo surrounded by a shattering crust–the epitome of the crispy-on-the-outside-soft-in-the-middle model for pretty much all delicious food.


Chef Thor samples the goods.

I don’t know how he does it, as he must surely have reached his lifetime allotment of bitterballen by now, but Chef Thor managed to sample a couple of Bites, with relish.

Maybe that’s because Chef Thor’s ultimate vision is to serve people nothing but balls: all round snacky food of all sorts, all easily munchable while strolling around. No need to sit still and be served–be dynamic instead! Spread love! Spread food! Taste the balls! Basically, all profits from his Bites are going to fund Chef Thor’s next project, which will involve a traveling bus, lots of love and lots of balls.

Meanwhile, in the background, Chef Thor’s pal was getting down with some clay. Whereas Thor is very into future food, little prefab morsels, all streamlined, his cohort was more into the spirit of starting with a whole live animal, breaking it down and serving it on plates you’ve made yourself.


Kneading

We debated the various philosophies for a bit, talked a little shop about the old Supperclub, pre-corporatization. “That was some of the worst food I ever ate in my life,” said Thor, of Supperclub’s early years, “but also some of the best and most creative. It was a space where you could try anything.”

Amsterdam in the early 1990s was this sweet spot of cheap rent and loads of creativity. Now most of the big squats have been shut down, and regular market forces have been brought to bear on restaurants, which now have to balance their books just like everyone else.

I’m rooting for Chef Thor’s magic all-ball bus–it might bring back a taste of those good years. In the meantime, I’ll settle for some tasty Love Bites.

Chef Thor op Youtube

14 Nov 2009

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