Arjan Weckseler started in professional kitchens in 1992.
Over the next two decades he worked his way through some of the country's finest addresses — Kasteel Erenstein in Kerkrade, Kasteel Wittem, De Swaen in Oisterwijk, Het Huys van Voskens in Tilburg, De Heerlyckheid in Hilvarenbeek — leading brigades of up to twenty-five cooks, and taking stages at three-starred kitchens in London along the way. In 2002 and 2003 he won the Zilveren Champignon, the Dutch hospitality industry's innovation award, two years running.
In 2013 he opened his own place: Aan het Fornuis, in Vught. Cooking clinics, private dining, exclusive evenings for companies and friends — and one new five-course menu, every single month, for ten years straight. Every one of those menus was written down, photographed, and filed away, without ever quite meaning to build an archive. It just happened, month after month, season after season.
Ten years and hundreds of dishes later, in 2023, the kitchen closed. What's left is thirty years of craft, documented in more detail than most restaurants ever keep — and now, finally, turned into the books you're looking at.