De Tuinkamer

Verdict: A seasonal garden restaurant that earns serious attention without the serious price tag

The most common assumption about plant-forward dining in the Netherlands is that it means a high-design urban restaurant charging €€€€ for a tasting menu. De Tuinkamer, operating out of a converted greenhouse on the grounds of the Priona gardens in Schuinesloot, breaks that assumption. This is a kitchen anchored to one of the most ecologically significant garden landscapes in the country, running a weekly-changing menu with over 80% plant content, doing it in a setting that reads as relaxed rather than reverent. If you have visited once and left impressed, the case for returning is the menu rotation: it changes every week, tied directly to what the surrounding gardens are producing.

The Space

The physical setting is a meaningful part of the decision here. The restaurant occupies a former greenhouse within the Priona gardens, which were designed roughly 60 years ago and became a reference point for Dutch wave-landscape architecture. That context is not incidental — the dining room sits inside a working garden estate, surrounded by over 6,000 plant species, including approximately 1,000 that appear on the red list of threatened plants. The spatial experience is unusual for a restaurant of this type: you are eating inside a structure that was built to grow things, enclosed by the same landscape that supplies the kitchen. If design-led restaurants like De Nieuwe Winkel in Nijmegen feel urban and architectural, De Tuinkamer feels genuinely rural and grounded. That distinction matters when choosing between them.

The Food

Chef Alwin Leemhuis structures the menu around what the Priona gardens are producing in any given week. Every dish contains a minimum of 80% plants — this is not a vegetarian restaurant in the strict sense, but plant material is the clear priority and the starting point for each creation. Because the gardens have been managed ecologically since their founding, the supply chain is about as short and traceable as it gets. The weekly rotation means repeat visits are never redundant, which is the practical upside of a hyper-seasonal model. If you visited earlier in the season, a return trip even a month later will produce a meaningfully different menu. The kitchen is open from April through Christmas, the window when the gardens are productive. Outside of that period, there is no service.

Booking and Timing

Booking difficulty is rated easy, which is notable for a restaurant operating on a weekly-changing garden menu in a genuinely distinctive setting. This is partly a function of location, Schuinesloot is not a destination most diners pass through by accident, but it means you can plan a visit without the three-month lead time that comparable plant-forward restaurants at the €€€€ tier require. The season runs April to Christmas, so plan accordingly. If you are travelling from Amsterdam or Zwolle, treat this as a day-trip destination and consider pairing it with an overnight stay by checking our Schuinesloot hotels guide.

Practical Details

For a broader view of what is available in the area, see our full Schuinesloot restaurants guide, bars guide, and experiences guide.