De Wilg

Beetroot first, then the pass

Beetroot tartare puts the root at the center before Paolo Rota, Executive Chef of De Wilg in De Mortel, lets the plate travel any further. The gesture suits the room: direct, seasonal, and more concerned with clarity than with display. Rota’s work here sits beside his chef role at Da Vittorio in St. Moritz, where he has cooked since winter 2019, but De Wilg asks for another register. The setting is smaller, the cooking more compact, the plate closer to the produce.

At De Wilg, his farm-to-table approach reads through dishes that hold their shape without ornament. Beetroot tartare stays earthy and plain-spoken. Confit duck leg brings time, fat, jus and morels into one line. Lentil dahl gives the menu a spiced, legume-led center, not as a concession but as a full dish with its own weight. The restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and that recognition belongs to this address, where generosity and restraint meet in the same service.

Confit, curry, and the local basket

The kitchen’s method is not built around spectacle. It is built around produce, seasoning, and the kind of cooking that asks for patience before it asks for attention. The duck leg is confited, then set against veal jus and morels, a dish that relies on texture as much as sauce. The lentil dahl carries curry spice and vegetables, giving warmth without moving away from the restaurant’s seasonal frame. A 7-gang verrassingsmenu also appears in the restaurant’s own language, placing the kitchen’s choices in sequence rather than turning the meal into a catalogue.

The wine program is curated rather than sprawling. House wines have been part of the praise around the table, including Portuguese Tinto, and the fit matters: the cooking is generous enough to take a glass with shoulders, but not so heavy that the wine has to fight. Dessert follows the same line. Chocolate parfait with blueberries and yoghurt ice cream gives the finish richness, acidity, and cold texture in measured proportion.

The old school still in the room

The room keeps the memory of its earlier life. De Wilg occupies a former primary school and ballet hall on St.-Antoniusstraat in De Mortel, and the conversion has not scrubbed the building clean of use. Low coat hooks remain. Ballet bars remain. Those details do not behave like decoration; they set the scale of the place, keeping the restaurant close to the village and to the hands that pass through it.

Service moves in an upscale casual register, warm without ceremony. The noise stays quiet, helped by the small scale and by tables set with enough space for conversation. In that atmosphere, the cooking does not need to announce itself. The pass sends out dishes that make sense in a former schoolroom: rooted, seasonal, and built for people who notice the difference between a garnish and a decision. Paolo Rota keeps the last impression as beetroot tartare, clean-edged and plain-spoken.