Tatekitchen in Amsterdam: Iron Chef Night at the HOLOLIFE Dinner

Tatekitchen
Written by Tateki Matsuda
 

The Farm Kitchen's Kookfabriek, with this year's theme on the screen: "Life Beyond a Lifetime."

Goedenavond from Amsterdam.

On Friday, November 13, the night before HOLOLIFE Summit 2026 opened, I went to the HOLOLIFE Dinner. The venue was The Farm Kitchen's Kookfabriek. Kookfabriek is Dutch for "cooking factory," and they mean it. Nobody brings you a plate here. You cook it yourself.

So this edition of Tatekitchen comes to you from neither my home kitchen nor an Airbnb. It comes from a Dutch cooking studio lit entirely in purple.

First you cook, then you eat

Every table had its own cooking station with cutting boards, knives and prepped ingredients. The chefs demonstrated up front while the big screen showed their hands. The person standing next to you is someone whose name you learned five minutes ago, and the question after "Where are you from?" is "Are you good at cooking?" My answer: "If I weren't a fighter, I'd be a chef."

Teemu Arina, the founder of the summit, opened the evening by saying the dinner is one of his favorite parts of the whole event. This year's theme is "Life Beyond a Lifetime." One of his slides read: three plants feed 60% of the world's population. There are some 50,000 edible plants, and yet about 15 crops supply 90% of global energy intake. The idea for the night was to put more of that variety on our plates.

"3 plants feed 60% of world population." Food biodiversity was the theme of the night.

The menu

The menu card for the night.

  • Welcome shot: a fermented plant shot

  • Starter: Dutch yellowtail ceviche with roasted corn and turmeric cream, pickled cucumber, Tomasu vinaigrette and Ghoa cress

  • Intermediary: artichoke with artichoke cream, Taggiasca olive crumble, salted lemon, buckwheat and quinoa

  • Main: mi-cuit salmon fillet with sweet-and-sour cauliflower, cauliflower cream, miso hollandaise, watercress oil and homemade furikake

  • Dessert: chocolate-avocado mousseline with kefir, blueberries, cacao nibs, pistachios and cashews

Miso, furikake, soy sauce. I enjoyed seeing Japanese flavors sit on a Dutch menu as if they had always been there. Tomasu, the chef told us, is a soy sauce made in Rotterdam and aged for two years.

Starter: ceviche, cut like sashimi

Our cooking station: cutting boards at the back, yellowtail on the tray in front.

The first plate was yellowtail. The chef's version was cut into small pieces, ceviche-style. So I asked: "Can I cut it like sashimi?" His answer: "Sure, if you like. Why not?"

That was all I needed. I sliced the fish the way I would for sashimi, layered it, put the corn cream alongside and finished with Ghoa cress, a sprout that tastes like coriander. When the chef came around he said, "Really creative. I really like this one." Someone at our table added, "We gotta pay respect for the fish."

When the ingredient is good, do less and let it speak. It is the same Japanese idea I wrote about in the Nice edition of Tatekitchen.

Starter: yellowtail, cut like sashimi, with roasted corn and turmeric cream.

Intermediary: artichoke

The second plate was artichoke: artichoke cream, an olive crumble, salted lemon, buckwheat and quinoa. Nothing but vegetables and grains, with texture and aroma stacked in layers.

Intermediary: artichoke with olive crumble and salted lemon.

Main: we are out of ingredients

Then came the main course, and the incident.

The plan was mi-cuit salmon (cooked gently, still soft in the center) with cauliflower cream and sweet-and-sour cauliflower. But my tablemates from Slovakia had been generous with the ingredients during the starter, and what was meant for the main course was gone.

What we had left: raw cauliflower and a clock.

I told the table, "We are in an emergency situation," and took over the side dish. "How many minutes do we have?" I turned the remaining cauliflower into a purée on the spot, looking for salt and a hand mixer along the way. On the chef's advice, a little green oil to finish. Purée under the salmon, and the plates made it to the table.

Limited time, limited ingredients, a team put together that evening. It felt exactly like Iron Chef, the Japanese TV show where chefs cook against the clock. I did not expect to find that atmosphere in Amsterdam, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Main: mi-cuit salmon on the improvised cauliflower purée.

At the end of the night I thanked the chef for the honor of cooking with him. "You're cooking, I'm watching," he said. Then he added: "The cauliflower was brilliant."

I have said for years that if I weren't a fighter, I'd be a chef. That night I got one small piece of evidence.

Dessert, and a toast

We closed with the chocolate-avocado mousseline: the mousse in the center, blueberries and cashews around it, cacao nibs and pistachio on top.

Dessert: chocolate-avocado mousseline.

The people I talked with that night came from Slovakia, Monaco, Egypt, India, Brazil and more. For one of the toasts I shared an old Japanese word: iyasaka, a wish for ever greater prosperity. One of them said, "I love it. I will write it down."

When a table had food left over, the word went around: don't throw it away, give it to the volunteers. That was part of what made it a good night.

Cooking together turns strangers into a team

A conversation that starts with a business card and one that starts over a shared cutting board go very differently. You run out of ingredients, you laugh, you figure it out, you eat together. People I had not known a few hours earlier felt like teammates by the time we left.

For me, the best part of the HOLOLIFE Dinner is that time around the food. People who came for nutrition and longevity set their titles aside, put on an apron and work on the same plate. You learn something there that a talk on stage does not teach.

My own talk at the summit gets a separate post in the shownotes.

That is the story of Tatekitchen opening for one night in Amsterdam, and of a chef who made my day.

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