Our story

A cellar, a stove, a stubborn idea.

Braise opened in 2017 in a wharf cellar that had been, in order: a coal store, a boat workshop and a genuinely terrible nightclub. We kept the brick and the low ceiling. The rest is cooking.

A chef working intently in a warm, dimly lit restaurant kitchen under copper pendant lights — Six burners, one charcoal grill — the whole kitchen, and most of the noise.

Margot Visser cooked in Lyon for six years and came home with one conviction: the food people remember is the food that took time. Not foam, not tweezers — time. The menu at Braise is four starters and four mains because that is what two cooks can do properly on six burners, and it changes every Thursday because that is when the market changes. The onion soup has outlived every attempt to take it off the card.

Dries Kuipers keeps the cellar and the room. The list leans French, the carafes are honest, and if you ask what to drink with the beef cheek he will pour you a taste before you commit. Between them they have exactly one ambition: to be the place you do not have to think about. You are hungry, it is Tuesday — Braise.

A chef in whites stirring a pot at the stove in a warm-lit kitchen

If it can't beat what you'd cook at home, it comes off the card.
Margot Visser — chef & co-owner

Come see for yourself

The proof is on the table.

Nine years in, the coal cellar smells of thyme and wood smoke. Come add an evening to the story.

Reserve a table