What are your favourite places for more progressive, modern cuisine?

Choux, Bolenius, Rijks – where I did a four-hands dinner (collaboration) in January, my first time cooking in the Netherlands in more than three decades – and Spectrum, which has two Michelin stars and is run by my protégé Sidney Schutte.

What did you do on your last trip to Amsterdam?

We went to see the guys at Brand & Levy – very cool guys making traditional dried sausages. They learned from the best in Tuscany and came back to create a really cool brand of artisanal dried sausages and hams that have a true Dutch identity.

There are a few things I need to eat when back in Amsterdam, like herring. In the winter the herrings are cured, pickled and eaten with chopped onions; then from June you eat the new harvest, called maatjes herring, without onions. For me, it’s the best sashimi on the planet.

I will also have a frikandel speciaal – a fried sausage that is well seasoned – total comfort food.

Then I will eat old, matured Dutch cheese – if well made, it’s better than Parmesan (sorry, Massimo Bottura) – and go for a nice pot of beer-boiled mussels from my province.

For breakfast I eat a bolus with salted butter from my region – bolus is soft bread dough rolled in brown sugar with spices, which smells like treacle when baked.