Beluga Loves You

Keeping the pass after the handover

The main ingredient comes first on Servais Tielman’s pass, with garnish kept in its place. As chef at Beluga Loves You in Maastricht, Servais Tielman works inside a house where origin is part of the method, not a line added after the plate is built. His route to this station began at Middelbare horecaschool in Heerlen and continued through a stage student post at Winselerhof, a practical apprenticeship in service pace, repetition, and pressure. Since 2019, he has held Beluga Loves You as chef and owner, taking on a restaurant founded in 1997 by Hans van Wolde and already carrying its own weight in Maastricht. The handover did not ask for imitation. It asked for continuity under new hands, with the day-to-day discipline of keeping a fine-dining room viable while cooking in it. Tielman’s other post, Cucina del Mondo in Heerlen, has also carried his name since 2016, but this Maastricht room gives the work a different register: a tasting-menu house in Céramique, close to the Meuse, with local Limburg products at the center of its seasonal cooking.

Seasonal menus built around Limburg

The kitchen’s structure is measured in courses rather than in a long à la carte spread. The BLY menu runs in several lengths, with 4, 5, or 6 courses at lunch and 6, 7, or 8 courses at dinner, alongside a separate Servais Selection. That architecture matters because it gives the pass a controlled rhythm: product, temperature, sauce, garnish, reset. The restaurant’s own language gives priority to the origin of ingredients, to a fresh tone in the dishes, and to the quality of the main element before anything decorative is added. Recent menu examples show the range without turning it into spectacle: squid with pineapple and yellow tomato; beetroot with foie gras, Granny Smith, and mole; mimolette with chorizo, porcini, and tarragon. The combinations are modern, but the discipline is old in its logic. One idea leads, the rest supports it. Michelin lists Beluga Loves You with one star in the 2025 Guide MICHELIN Netherlands, a number that belongs to this Maastricht address under its current name.

The room along the Meuse

The room keeps close to the region without making a stage set of it. Its design draws on the nearby Meuse, the marl caves, and the surrounding forests, translated into clean lines and controlled detail rather than rustic quotation. Service is formal, but the noise stays conversational, which suits a restaurant where the meal moves by sequence and the wine program has to keep pace with the kitchen. In Céramique, that sleekness feels specific: Maastricht’s river district outside, a composed fine-dining room inside, the counter and the pass working in measured exchange. The ambition is not to overwhelm the table. It is to make the origin of a dish legible before the next plate arrives.

A restaurant fought for in public

Beluga Loves You has also had to define itself through strain. After lockdowns, flooding, and fire, Tielman publicly described an attempt to avoid bankruptcy and keep the business alive through an out-of-court creditors’ agreement. The detail belongs here because it sits inside the craft of ownership: protecting the room, the brigade, the suppliers, and the name while the kitchen keeps moving. A new partner, Limburg hospitality entrepreneur Danny Deng, later entered the story, giving the house another way forward. For now, the clearest measure remains on the plate, in the BLY menu at Beluga Loves You.