Merlet

Dunes, Gold Leaf, and a Kitchen That Earns Its Stars Away from the City

The road to Schoorl runs through a corridor of dune woodland that feels, on a grey North Sea morning, like the edge of something. Merlet is a one-Michelin-star restaurant in Schoorl, Netherlands, led by chef Marco Helsloot. Duinweg 15 sits in that margin, between the coastal scrub and a small village that most international diners will never have heard of. The dining room at Merlet reflects this geography with unusual literalness: a moss wall frames the fireplace, a glass wall filled with sand shaped into dune forms runs along one side, and gold leaf catches whatever light filters through. The effect is neither rustic nor ostentatious. It is, more accurately, a room that has thought carefully about where it is. That attentiveness extends to the kitchen.

Where Merlet Sits in the Dutch Fine-Dining Map

The Netherlands has a layered fine-dining circuit that stretches well beyond Amsterdam. De Librije in Zwolle and Aan de Poel in Amstelveen anchor opposite ends of the country's Michelin geography, while coastal addresses like De Bokkedoorns in Overveen demonstrate that the North Sea margin has its own fine-dining logic. Merlet belongs to that coastal sub-category, holding one Michelin star. In a national context that includes De Nieuwe Winkel in Nijmegen operating at the organic and plant-forward end of the spectrum, and Brut172 in Reijmerstok pushing into more experimental territory, Merlet occupies a position of classical confidence: French technique with luxury produce, sharpened by Asian touches and grounded in seasonal discipline.

Restaurant trades at the €€€€ tier, consistent with peer addresses such as Fred in Rotterdam and Inter Scaldes in Kruiningen. For guests travelling from outside the Randstad, the positioning is deliberate: this is a destination dinner, not a neighbourhood drop-in. The harbour of Den Helder is thirty minutes by car, and Texel, the largest of the Wadden Islands, is reachable by ferry in twenty minutes from Den Helder, which makes Merlet a logical centrepiece for a multi-day itinerary along this stretch of coast.

Chef Marco Helsloot and the Kitchen's Current Direction

Marco Helsloot shapes Merlet's current culinary direction. What the record confirms is a kitchen operating within the classical French idiom while extending its vocabulary in two directions: toward luxury produce, langoustine, sweetbreads, and toward the kind of vegetable-centred discipline that earned the restaurant a five-Radish recognition from the We're Smart Green Guide, a rating system that evaluates how seriously kitchens engage with plant-based cooking. Five Radishes is the ceiling of that scheme, placing Merlet alongside a small cohort of European restaurants that treat vegetables not as supporting cast but as structurally integral to the menu's architecture.

That dual commitment, classical luxury ingredients alongside a formally recognised vegetable programme, is unusual within the €€€€ Modern Cuisine bracket. Most addresses at this price point resolve the tension by choosing a lane. Merlet, under Helsloot, appears to hold both, with dishes that reportedly combine sweetbreads with precisely treated vegetables and a rich jus: a combination that uses classical richness as a frame for the plant-led elements rather than treating them as alternatives. The cuisine type listed includes both French and Asian references, suggesting the kitchen uses Asian technique or flavour logic as a source of contrast or seasoning depth rather than as a standalone register. This is a relatively common approach in contemporary Dutch fine dining, where kitchens use umami-building from fermentation and East Asian pantries to add dimension to French-structured plates. De Lindehof in Nuenen and De Lindenhof in Giethoorn operate within comparable frameworks of regional grounding combined with broader European and global technique.

The Wine List: A Serious Programme in an Unlikely Postcode

The wine programme at Merlet is a defining part of the operation. Wine Director Jeffrey van der Beek and sommeliers Rein Denneman and Perry Heneweer manage a cellar of 5,000 bottles drawn from 640 selections. The list earned the Star Wine List number-one ranking for 2025, a signal that the programme punches well above what the restaurant's geography might lead you to expect. Strengths lie in Burgundy and Bordeaux, and pricing falls at the mid-range tier: a spread of bottles rather than a list skewed toward trophy labels or entry-level volume.

Burgundy and Bordeaux depth at a coastal dune address is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate positioning as a complete dining experience, a restaurant where the wine programme is designed to match the ambition of the kitchen rather than serve as an afterthought. Ciel Bleu in Amsterdam and Parkheuvel in Rotterdam operate at comparable price points within urban settings where a strong wine cellar is almost assumed. That Merlet has built a programme of this depth in Schoorl, where the supply chain and customer base are inherently more constrained, is a meaningful operational signal. It also suggests that the restaurant's owners, Martin and Carla van Bourgonje, view the wine list as a core part of the proposition rather than an amenity.

The Room and What It Does to the Meal

Interior design at this level is rarely neutral. The choice to echo the dune landscape inside the dining room, through the sand-shaped glass wall, the moss, the fireplace, creates a coherence between setting and context that supports rather than competes with the food. The gold leaf introduces a deliberate tension: luxury signalling within an environment that otherwise leans into its coastal, natural surroundings. The result is a dining room with a specific personality, distinct from the clean-lined urban modernism of city-based fine-dining rooms or the country-house register of rural addresses. Meals span lunch and dinner service, and the cuisine pricing at the $$$ level (two courses, excluding drinks) places the food portion of the experience at the upper end but within range of comparable starred addresses.

For guests considering comparable Dutch rural-destination experiences, De Groene Lantaarn in Staphorst offers a useful reference point in a different region, while Stand in Budapest illustrates how the destination-dining model operates across different national contexts.

Planning a Visit

Schoorl sits on the North Holland coast, approximately 55 kilometres north of Amsterdam, accessible by car or by train to Alkmaar followed by a short onward connection. The restaurant serves both lunch and dinner. Reservations are essential, particularly for weekend dinner. The €€€€ pricing and the $$$ food-cost benchmark suggest budgeting for a full experience including the wine programme. A corkage option at €35 exists for those who want to bring a specific bottle. The address at Duinweg 15 places the restaurant within the dune zone directly accessible from the village, making it a natural anchor for a coastal itinerary that might extend to the Wadden Islands ferry at Den Helder or a day on Texel.