Somewhere between city edges and forgotten fields, you’ll find Jonael, walking slowly, eyes scanning the ground. He’s a forager and urban grower who searches for the wild plants that most of us pass by; forgotten traditional delicacies, leaves that taste of citrus, weeds that tell stories of survival. Through his project Spruitje Greens, he bridges the gap between the natural and the cultivated, collecting and growing edible plants that reflect place, season, and resilience. His finds make their way into our pastries, an everyday way to bring these ingredients beyond fine dining, and into our Fermented & Foraged evenings, where they take on new life through preservation, experimentation, and shared curiosity.
Jonael’s journey began far from where he forages today. Born in Curaçao and raised with a close connection to the land, he grew up surrounded by the understanding that food isn’t something you simply buy, it’s something you find, nurture, and respect. That curiosity followed him to the Netherlands, where he started to look closer at what grows naturally in the landscapes around him. The result is a practice that combines foraging, small-scale cultivation, and education; not just about food, but about how we relate to the living world around us.
Spruitje Greens focuses on plants that thrive without human intervention: sea asters and marsh samphire from the coast, oxalis and chickweed from forest edges, or forgotten herbs like sweet cicely and wild garlic that once had a place in everyday cooking. These are ingredients that speak of the soil, the water, and the shifting seasons. Many of them grow in abundance, resilient, adaptable, often overlooked, yet they carry complex flavors and nutritional value that challenge the idea of what’s “worthy” of the plate.
For Jonael, this work isn’t just about taste. It’s a way of reconnecting people with the ecosystems they inhabit. By bringing these plants into kitchens and conversations, he invites chefs and diners alike to notice what’s around them, to see that the wild and the cultivated aren’t separate worlds but part of one living system. In a time when food often feels distant from its source, Jonael’s work reminds us that the land still offers everything we need, if we only learn to look again.
