A crispy moment with Maarten Jordaens

Maarten Jordaens, a brilliant young chef who excels at making incredible toppings that blend textures and tastes, shares his vision as a chef and entrepreneur.

You are a chef known for revolutionizing topping, where did this idea come from?

The idea came from the gastronomy. In the past I worked as a chef for Michelin star restaurants and for any reason I always had the responsibility for sweets and salty decorations and toppings. That’s how I became interested into having different textures and for sure crispy textures in dishes and desserts. After working as a chef I did an education on food development and saw a lot of chefs don’t have the knowhow for making innovative crispy toppings or they don’t have the staff for it. That how I started the brand “Jordà” to help people with this problem. Of course my background is very helpful because we only work with premium products, our crunches are nicely balanced, flavors are more special and we don’t use any artificial aroma. We started in a garage of 50m2 and next year we will move to 1000M2 of new production so the world is starting to understand the crispy touch !

You like to use chocolate in unexpected and surprising ways, what is your favorite savory chocolate recipe?

Chocolate is a lovely product, its like a wine, different origins, different beans, different ways to burn beans and the combination of smell and taste. Mostly I use chocolate in desserts but when I suggest a salty recipe I go for a stew with a little touch of very high percentage origin chocolate to give the stew that extra flavor.

When you really want to go crazy use the Veliche Obsession 30 with a piece of crispy salty bacon, it’s the salt of the bacon that makes the combination so nice… great breakfast by the way 😉

You are an entrepreneur and have set up your own business.
If you had to name 3 qualities to be an entrepreneur, what would they be?

1.Believe in yourself and don’t let bring you down by other people

When I was starting my business a lot of people wants to make money on me and tried to bring me down, I’m happy this is far away but I think a lot of starting people have issues on this.

2.Think global but act local

I always had the ambition to sell my brand worldwide, that why we started doing export from day 1 in the company. But we leaned during covid its important to work with Local producers. That’s why we changed a lot in the company on suppliers for packaging and ingredients. Everything is coming again from Europe and we try to use typical Belgian products in our recipes like: Chocolate, Speculoos, Cuberdon, Sugars,…

3.Say what you do, do what you say

Very important for me in the communication to my staff, they need to know what I do, where I want to go and make the structure for them, ofcourse on my side I have to do what I promise and they them the opportunities to make it come true, the same for our clients, suppliers, partners,…

You gave us the pleasure of working with our Signature Origine chocolates. Which one appealed to you the most? Why did you choose it?

For me the Usulután 65, I like smell and taste so much, its very nice balanced but at the same time very characteristic. Very nice to combine with nuts, and our crispy grains and seeds in a chocolate bar.

You like to combine chocolate and spices. Okapi 65 is very marked by its herbaceous and spicy side, what did you think of it? How did you work it?

Okapi has a really nice balanced flavor profile, the spices give it really a unique flavor. I like this chocolate in a deep ganache, not to much components but straight to the point with a touch of cardemon spice inside the recipe for example: Classic Chocolate Cake with Okapi Cardemon ganache and a sprinkle of salt and olive oil

Which is your favorite expression in everyday life?

Make the best of everyday! Full throttle everday

Thank you chef !

Discover more recipes of Maarten Jordaens.