20 Years of Good Food at Madame Janette: Chef and owner Karsten Gesing on Bikes, Bacon and the Restaurant’s Success
If you didn’t notice when popular restaurant Madame Janette celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, don’t worry, you weren’t supposed to.
— By Amie Watson
— Photography: Kenneth Theysen
— Cover: Karsten Gesing, The Original Hardcore Chef / Owner – Madame Janette
Chef and owner Karsten (Kasi) Gesing didn’t advertise it. Rather than making a big deal of the date, he simply surprised that evening’s unknowing guests with sparkling wine – typical of a man for whom recognition means little but perfection means everything.
When Kasi opened the now iconic restaurant in 1999, they expected it to become the destination it is today: a place known for its good food made from scratch, from the bread to the Swiss chocolate soufflé, and its secret garden-style patio and courtyard. Other restaurants have tried to replicate Madame Janette’s success, but failed, says Kasi, whose larger-than-life personality, culinary skill and attention to detail are as much a part of the restaurant’s success as its bestselling bun-less burgerloin – an enormous hunk of tenderloin sliced in half and stuffed with sautéed onions, mushrooms and cheese, all drenched in creamy Béarnaise sauce.
Kasi came to Aruba after exploring other parts of the Caribbean. When a German owner of a well-known Aruban restaurant needed a chef, he called Kasi to help for a few days. A few days turned into a few years and the restaurant grew in popularity, until Kasi figured he’d be happier and make more money if he opened his own place.
Through connections, Kasi found the right property – a dilapidated, bankrupted Indonesian restaurant – and invested into transforming it into Madame Janette.
The name comes from the spicy, native Aruban chili pepper, but also from his culinary training. “It sounds a bit French,” he says, shrugging. “I learned the classic French way when I was younger – the French cooking gods. I’m 53 years old. We’re talking a completely different time.”
When Madame Janette first opened, it was only as big as the covered seating area, says Christiaan, the current Head of Guest Services. He started at the restaurant as a busboy in 1999 after moving to Aruba with his long-time girlfriend, Zuzana, an exceptional server who’s also been there since the start. The next year, it opened the courtyard, which Kasi expanded on both sides for the restaurant’s 10th anniversary.
Madame Janette’s white-pebbled entryway, with its hardwood couches and chairs, wasn’t there from the start either. And the tiki bar used to be in what’s now the wine room. “Then we figured we needed more washrooms, parking, a waiting area and a bigger bar,” says Kasi. “We needed music when people come in – more romantic, not too disruptive. You get a ‘Goodbye sir, thank you madam’ and there’s an attendant in the washrooms and someone outside to get you a taxi.”
According to Kasi’s partner in life, Yvon Schepers, who co-manages the office with Enno Rob, “The success of the restaurant is really due to Kasi’s mind and creativity in the smallest things. He decided where to place every light bulb, the speakers, chose the colors. And after 20 years, he’s still saying ‘We should do this, we should do that.’”
Lounging in the backyard of his home, sunglasses fending off the Aruban sunshine, birds chirping around him, Kasi belies his reputation as a hard rocking, fast living guy.
He subtly avoids my question about whether there’s any family connection to the steak à la mafia on his menu. The center-cut of beef comes with Italian herbs, prosciutto di Parma and Sicilian sea salt. “I like to give things interesting names,” he says. “It has marinara and mozzarella, so it’s kind of Italian.”
But he cracks just a little: “My uncle had racehorses at the track. Today it’d be cool, but it was a harsh environment, growing up in a different way, protected from everybody on the streets. Now, one person in my family is a doctor and everybody else is doing normal stuff,” he says.
But cooking and attention to detail also runs in the family. His German grandfather, father and four uncles made bratwurst and other sausages and cured meats from whole animals, delivering their products to hotels and the best restaurants around Düsseldorf and Cologne.
In those days, nobody wanted to be a chef, said Kasi. “Except the kids who were lazy in school, like me,” he jokes, “but I was so impressed by the chefs in their uniforms and chef hats. They looked like generals, yelling at people, ‘Yes, Chef!’” Now, instead of a toque, he sports a Speedy Gonzales tattoo, paid for by his German kitchen buddies-in-arms once he started working fast enough to join their ranks.
His first tattoo was a Harley-Davidson that he got at a famous Berlin biker party in the 1990s. The other tattoos came after and cover other interests: beer (a Guinness logo), music (Johnny Cash and Stray Cats) and a good joke (ask about the screw and the eye).
There are no chef toques in his Madame Janette kitchen, either, and the cuisine runs a bit more casual than the Michelin-star fare of Kasi’s training in Switzerland. “Madame Janette is a place for people who like to eat,” says Kasi. “It was never meant to be a gourmet place. Back in the day, it probably was for Aruba, because there wasn’t that much fine dining. But I have something for everybody. You can come in your flip-flops and shorts.”
But French techniques show up in everything from the bang bang shrimp with pineapple concassé and sesame seeds to the surf and turf with Caribbean lobster and succulent grilled giant tiger prawns. French stocks and sauces form the basis of the demi-glace on the marinated free-range rack of lamb as well as the green peppercorn-cognac sauce on the 42-oz. tomahawk steak-for-two. And his textbook-perfect vinaigrettes range from a bittersweet house herb dressing on lamb lettuce and frisée to the morel and porcini dressing for the melt-in-your-mouth beef carpaccio.
A lot of menu remains unchanged. “The almond grouper was there from the first day. It was perfect like it was. It’s the bestselling dish on the island. Why would I change it? The lamb rack and tenderloin were there too. And the schnitzel and goulash, I can’t take those from the menu,” he says.
The same goes for the hot shrimp casserole with its golden Old Amsterdam cheese gratin. “I wanted to update it, but people asked for it again and again. It’s like the lobster thermidor; we have to do it even if it’s not on the menu.”
Kasi has been trying to lighten the menu, though. “Back in the day people said, ‘It’s so heavy’ because I’m a big fan of using hollandaise, which is part of a lot of other sauces.” But when asked if anyone ever complains about there being too much cheese, it’s an adamant ‘no.’
“I still think butter and good Canadian bacon belong in every kitchen where I work, just like good olive oil. Good ingredients from the beginning make a good dinner in the end.”
His new menu favorites include the pulled pork spring rolls with crunchy slaw and a sweet-and-spicy plum dipping sauce and the ceviche, made with rosada, corvina, snapper or grouper, depending on what’s fresh. “Most ceviches on Aruba are too acidic. They use lime juice and vinegar. But I use lime juice and orange juice, so I don’t need to add sugar and I have enough acidity. That juice, I eat it like a soup with a spoon or dig in with a piece of bread.”
Memorable Moments: The Naming of the “Escalope del Commendatore Mario Andretti”
Over the years, the restaurant has had its share of exceptional nights, from engagements (“Putting rings in cakes – the usual stuff,” he says) to buyouts (special events like welcome dinners or corporate celebrations where they transform the restaurant’s décor as needed – from a romantic secret garden complete with fresh flowers to a non-stuffy dinner and dance under twinkling lights) to surprise dance parties.
“Sometimes people just start dancing and suddenly you have dancing everywhere,” he says. He remembers one couple in wheelchairs that started moving to the nightly live music the second it started. “Then they had some cocktails and they were swinging even more.”
But his most memorable night might be when professional race car driver Mario Andretti came. (There’s a picture of the two of them behind the reception when you walk into the restaurant.) “Super nice guy. Big portion guy. I’d seen him live when I was 12, so he was one of my heroes.”
Kasi made him a special dish: a giant scallopine – pounded and breaded pork topped with arugula and raw onions tossed in aged balsamic and high-quality olive oil with heaps of Parmigiano-Reggiano. “He loved it. I marinated it the way my grandpa did it.” So Kasi asked Andretti if he could name the dish after him.
Kasi’s love of classic sports cars might exceed his love of the restaurant. When Andretti didn’t believe that he owned an original first-owner 1974 Carrera S, he went home and got it. He would have let the pro drive it, but he declined. “That guy’s raced every car in every race. He doesn’t need to drive a Porsche in the Caribbean,” says Kasi with a tiny smile.
Andretti might have been more interested in testing out one of Kasi’s bikes, maybe his favorite Triumph or the Ducati, Norton, BMW, Suzuki, Kawasaki or handcrafted Cafe Racers. Kasi used to have 20, but has downsized to six. “You find an old junker for a few hundred and you make something out of it. There’s a piece of you in that bike,” he says.
The Future of Madame Janette
Twenty years in, Kasi isn’t about to relax. He plans to put his family’s butcher shop knowledge to work. “I want to make a dry-ageing room with Himalayan rock salt. After that, I’ll go buy a Texas smoker the size of a giant table. I’ll build my own test smoking facility in my backyard and try to do brisket and barbecue until I think it’s perfect,” he says.
And perfect is the keyword, says Yvon. While tasting the new specials last spring, Kasi spent weeks getting them up to his standards. While he’s his own biggest critic, those standards also apply to his team.
“It’s hard to find people who can learn to pay attention to every little detail. Like, if my French fries aren’t perfect, I go nuts,” says Kasi. “It’s like being a diamond and you go from being rough to getting cut down to being shiny and nice,” he says of his own training and how he’d like to shape his team. “Then the rest of your life you produce quality stuff. Sometimes I feel like Don Quixote fighting windmills. The only thing that keeps me awake at night is people not working with me,” he says.
That attention to detail is a big part of why people come back, and why adults who came as kids now come with their own kids and people still come in wearing Madame Janette t-shirts from 10 years ago or the restaurant’s tenth anniversary cap. “One couple even had our bartender’s band t-shirt on. They were in their late ‘70s and walking around in a rock and roll band shirt,” he says.
With such a loyal clientele and obsession with perfection, will the restaurant stick around another 20 years?
“Let’s hope it lasts a hundred,” says Kasi.
