The famous Asian restaurant Oriental Greenhouse is calling it quits. The famous green building on Eindhoven’s Aalsterweg will have to make way for an apartment complex.
Studio040
Sunday 2 June is the last day the restaurant will be open. After 25 years of success in the city, it has to close. The building was rented by its owners and has been sold to a company that will demolish it for flats.
“We still had many plans for the restaurant. But to buy it did not work out,” says co-owner Simon de Wit. In 2000, the restaurant was bought by the Chen family, his in-laws. In 2013, their daughters took over.
Regular guests
Guests who come for a bite to eat on Friday nights are greeted warmly as if they were friends. And that’s not surprising, because according to De Wit, most people have been coming here for years. “Some people came here when they were young, and now come here with their children,” he says. “It’s a family restaurant, from both sides.” He himself married his wife at the restaurant, and his children also work there now.
One of those regulars is there again tonight. “My fondest memory here is the time I found a pearl in an oyster,” he says. “I then had a ring made from it and gave it to my girlfriend.” So Friday night, oysters are back on the menu, because who knows. “I’m really going to miss this place tremendously,” he says.
Success
Another guest coming for dinner with his family also has fond memories of the restaurant. In fact, he also worked there for a few years. “I got to go to festivals with the food truck back then. That was really fantastic. I even got to go to Paris with it once,” he says.
This is also one of the reasons the restaurant became such a success. “We were always quick to capitalise on trends, such as delivery and takeaway,” De Wit explains. “We survived the economic crisis and the corona era. It’s a shame then that it has to end this way.”
But according to the guest, that is not the only reason for the success. “Surely it is the staff that makes it so much fun here.”
Other restuarant
The family will now put their energies into their other restaurant, Ikigai, which opened almost five years ago at the Philips Stadium. A takeaway location is now being added to that, on the corner of Keizersgracht and Grote Berg.
Source: Studio040.nl
Translated by: Anitha Sevugan
