Liesbeth Bliek
If your visit to 2017 TEFAF Maastricht is your first time in the city, you’re in for a real treat. Spending time in this Dutch “Southern belle” will be like meeting up with a dear old friend, bubbling with energy.
Maastricht is the city where the Dutch, as well as foreign visitors, enjoy the Burgundian lifestyle.
The Burgundian Culinary Life
Maastricht is the city where the Dutch, as well as foreign visitors, enjoy the Burgundian lifestyle. Nowhere is this more evident than in the city’s many restaurants, which are rich with exuberant, stylish, and compelling food and wine.
Beluga Loves You
Feast your taste buds at the two-star Michelin restaurant Beluga Loves You, which features the creations of chef Hans van Wolde. Here you can experience the high-end cuisine, wines, and cocktails, all with a great view of the river Maas. The restaurant is situated on the ground floor of a luxury apartment building designed by architect Jo Coenen.
Tout à Fait
In the middle of the historic city center, you will find one-star Michelin restaurant, Tout à Fait. The restaurant has an enoteca (wine repository), serving dozens of wines by the glass. It’s a lovely place to start an evening of fine dining, with an aperitif accompanied by oysters or other fruits de mer. Chef Bart Ausems’ main ingredients: love and attention.
Location, Location, Location
How about dining in a church or a castle, maybe a convent, a vaulted cellar, a former barracks, or an 18th-century mansion?
If you like to combine fine dining with Maastricht’s rich history, why not enjoy a heavenly dinner in the Kruisherenrestaurant? Located in the church of a former 15th-century convent, it is now a five-star Design Hotel. The entourage alone is worth a visit.
Or, just outside Maastricht, Restaurant Château St. Gerlach, where you can enjoy a French-oriented cuisine in the former sitting rooms of the nobility. There’s also Le Bon Vivant, located in a vaulted cellar; Le Petit Bonheur, a former 18th-century mansion; and Talentino Mestreech, once an Ursuline convent.
Once you have discovered Maastricht’s culinary secrets, you might not want to leave anytime soon.
TEFAF Festival
Theater aan het Vrijthof will once again be the scene of the DURING TEFAF Festival. This annual festival of performing arts and music—held from Friday (March 10) to Sunday (March 19)—offers international artists in dance, opera, and music.
Music Maestro!
Under the baton of chief conductor Dmitri Liss, the South Netherlands Philharmonic will be performing Richard Strauss’ Don Juan, Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, and Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The Nederlandse Reisopera opera company will be staging Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni, while master pianist Severin von Eckardstein will be joined by Isabelle van Keulen (viola), Franziska Hölscher (violin), and Danjulo Ishizaka (cello) for a much-anticipated performance.
Tripping the Light Fantastic
The Festival will host the world premiere of Marie van Vollenhoven’s multimedia piece The BlackWhite Game, incorporating dance, theater, music, and visual arts. Dutch dance company Introdans will be performing Monumentaal, a choreographic masterpiece including works of Jiří Kylián, Lucinda Childs, and Regina van Berkel.
Other Nearby Events
From March 10 to 12, the Sint Janskerk church is again a bibliophiles’ heaven. It is hosting the Maastricht Antiquarian Book and Print Fair MABP, one of Europe’s leading antiquarian book events. More than 25 prestigious booksellers will present their most precious, valuable, and interesting items.
For the first time—only five minutes from TEFAF—the international contemporary art fair YIA will take place in Maastricht. Hosted by the exhibition venue Gebouw M, Tapijnkazerne, it will feature a selection of 28 projects from prestigious international galleries.
Bonnefanten
A visit to Maastricht would not be complete without spending some quality time in the Bonnefantenmuseum, the museum of fine art. Apart from its permanent collection, you can visit some of its temporary exhibitions, including Ernst Caramelle’s Illusion and Revelation. Caramelle is making a wall fresco, exhibiting works on sun-bleached paper, as well as a few small panels. There is also Cai Guo-Qiang’s My Stories of Painting, Dutch artist Ton Boelhouwer’s floors & walls / from ground, and Aura by contemporary Chinese artist Hao Liang.
Birds and Sharks
At the Marres Centre for Contemporary Culture, 19 national and international artists collaborated on the mural The Painted Bird, which has a surface area of over 750 square meters. The canvas of this work is the galleries, corridors, stairwells, floors, and ceilings of the Marres house. The title is borrowed from the Jerzy Kosinski’s novel of the same name.
The Museum aan het Vrijthof, in the city center, will be showing A Passion for TASCHEN. At the annual Van Eyck Open Studios, participating artists, designers, architects, and curators will be displaying the work of their residencies at the Jan van Eyck Academy.
Had enough of art for a while? The Natural History Museum Maastricht will be a nice distraction, especially their shark exhibition. But then—quickly back to TEFAF of course!
