Qualla: Hof van Cleve https://qualla.com/hof-van-cleve en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:32 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/3/hof-van-cleve-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Hof van Cleve https://qualla.com/hof-van-cleve Hof van Cleve: Introduction https://qualla.com/hof-van-cleve/ Photo credit Heinrich Mertens, CC BY-SA 4.0. The drive from Brussels takes about an hour. You leave the motorway, follow narrow Flemish lanes through fields of wheat and sugar beet, and eventually - if your GPS has not given up - you come to Kruishoutem, a village of around 8,000 souls. There is a church, a few cafes, a war memorial. And there is, or rather there was, an old farmhouse on a back lane with three Michelin stars over the door. For most of two decades, Hof van Cleve was the only restaurant in Belgium with that distinction. Diners flew in from Tokyo and New York. The chef, Peter Goossens, never moved. The cooking did.

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Image: Heinrich Mertens | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/3/hof-van-cleve-wp/u143-hof-van-cleve-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Hof van Cleve: A Farmhouse and an Agreement https://qualla.com/hof-van-cleve/ Photo credit Heinrich Mertens, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name is older than the cooking: hof van Cleve, the yard - or court - of the Cleve family, who lived at the spot until 1968. The first restaurant on the site, in the 1980s, was a modest country place. When Peter Goossens bought it from the previous owner in 1987, the deal came...

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Image: Heinrich Mertens | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/3/hof-van-cleve-wp/u143-hof-van-cleve-a-farmhouse-and-an-agreement.mp3 0:06 2 full Hof van Cleve: Cooking in a Village https://qualla.com/hof-van-cleve/ Photo credit Heinrich Mertens, CC BY-SA 4.0. Belgium is a country that takes food seriously, and the cluster of Flemish three-stars and two-stars is, per capita, one of the densest concentrations of high-end cooking on earth. But Hof van Cleve was peculiar even by Belgian standards. There was no city to draw from, no theatr...

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Image: Heinrich Mertens | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/3/hof-van-cleve-wp/u143-hof-van-cleve-cooking-in-a-village.mp3 0:06 3 full Hof van Cleve: The Team Behind the Door https://qualla.com/hof-van-cleve/ Photo credit Heinrich Mertens, CC BY-SA 4.0. Peter Goossens owns and runs Hof van Cleve with his wife Lieve. The dining room they built was famous for service that matched the kitchen: Stijn Van der Beken was named Best Sommelier of Belgium in 2004; Pieter Verheyde took the same title in 2012; Mathieu Vanneste in 2016; Tom ...

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Image: Heinrich Mertens | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/3/hof-van-cleve-wp/u143-hof-van-cleve-the-team-behind-the-door.mp3 0:06 4 full Hof van Cleve: Closed for Lockdown, Twice https://qualla.com/hof-van-cleve/ Photo credit Heinrich Mertens, CC BY-SA 4.0. COVID-19 hit Belgian restaurants hard, and Hof van Cleve hard in particular. The first lockdown closed the doors from March to June 2020. The second was longer: October 2020 to June 2021. Asked about takeaway during the pandemic, Goossens famously replied: "You cannot put Hof van...

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]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/3/hof-van-cleve-wp/u143-hof-van-cleve-closed-for-lockdown-twice.mp3 0:06 5 full Hof van Cleve: The Move https://qualla.com/hof-van-cleve/ Photo credit Heinrich Mertens, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the end of 2023, after 37 years of cooking in the farmhouse, Peter Goossens sold Hof van Cleve to his long-serving head chef Floris Van Der Veken. The plan was not closure - Goossens was sixty and had a new project opening in Knokke - but succession, and he was open about why....

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Image: Heinrich Mertens | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/4/3/hof-van-cleve-wp/u143-hof-van-cleve-the-move.mp3 0:06 6 full