A Chef Who Grows What She Serves

Anna Wynants is a chef, and she grows everything she cooks. She doesn't ring a supplier or drive to a farm. She walks out into her own garden, picks whatever is ready that day, carries it back to the kitchen, and serves it that evening. To her that isn't a clever idea. It is simply how food was always meant to work, farming and cooking as one thing, not two.

She comes by it honestly. Anna grew up eating from the garden. “Growing up, our parents had a large vegetable garden and meals were always cooked with vegetables direct from our land” she says. “So, I actually never knew anything else.” She and her sister Jozefien were born on a biodynamic farm, now one of the largest in Belgium — the place where their parents met in its pioneering years, and where their mother threw herself into organic and biodynamic growing.

As a girl, Anna wanted to be a chef and open her own restaurant. She did, after studying sociology and social entrepreneurship. But she could never see the kitchen and the soil as two separate things. “I've always seen farming and cooking as something that belongs together and can't be separated,” she says. “I can only be a good chef when I have a strong connection with the land.”

A Restaurant in the Field

Today, Anna and Jozefien run their own farm with a pop-up restaurant. They call it De Keukentafel, “The Kitchen Table,” a small 0.4-hectare market garden in Oosterzele, in the Flemish countryside. The plot their parents bought had been ordinary conventional farmland, right beside the family's vegetable garden and orchard. They began caring for it the regenerative way — cover crops, compost, agroforestry, rotation, and no ploughing — and slowly it came back to life. After three years the lab tests said what they could already see: not a trace of pesticide left in their crops.

The farm itself rests in their father's hands. He is the farmer who does the day-to-day work, with a love and dedication Anna struggles to put into words. The three of them sit together to make the planning, buy the seeds and work out the amounts, but he is the one who never takes a holiday, because the tomatoes need care every single day. The brains behind the planning, Anna says, and the magical hands behind the farm, are all his.

They turned an old barn into a small, warm restaurant. Now they serve a tasting menu made entirely from what they grow, opened with a botanical drink pairing Jozefien makes from the farm's own herbs. In season, the guests come three times a week, twenty at a time, and before they sit down they walk the farm to see what is growing; in summer, the tables move outside, right into the middle of the field. “I want to inspire my guests toward a more sustainable way of living,” Anna says, “by giving them a unique culinary experience in between the vegetables they eat.”

“There really isn't a shorter supply chain,” Anna explains, “because I don't even go to the farmer or the store. I harvest everything myself, cook it, and then serve it to the people at the table.” The vegetables never travel, never sit in storage, never lose their taste, while the dairy and dry goods that round out the menu come from local, organic suppliers. The menu is written by the garden, not the other way around.

It is also how she keeps a small farm alive. “To be able to earn a living as a farmer you need to find new ways to earn money,” she says, “because by just selling potatoes you have no way to survive.” By turning her harvest into a menu, plus workshops, catering, and soon her own cider and jams, Anna holds on to the value of her food instead of handing it to a chain that never rewarded the care she put into it.

In the summer of 2025, Anna and Jozefien reached the goal they had been chasing for years: from that season on, every single vegetable on the plate has come from their own land. Their cooking has since drawn national press, and in November 2025 Anna won the Belgian semi-final of the We're Smart Green Guide's cooking competition. The Benelux final follows in Rotterdam this September, where the winning chef receives the Green Chef's Hat and De Keukentafel already stands in the guide itself, with three radishes to its name.

A Slightly Better Place

Anna dreams of expanding the farm and being able to run a restaurant year round, but the law stands in their way. In Belgium, you are not allowed to run a restaurant on farmland, a rule meant to protect what little farmland is left. De Keukentafel is granted just four thirty-day windows a year to run a pop-up operation.

Anna believes this should be changed. Her argument is that farms like De Keukentafel protect farming rather than threaten it. They are using farming land to produce food while connecting consumers to the source.

“We don't need any financial support,” Anna says, “we mainly need a license that would enable us to expand our operation.” This is part of the reasons why she wanted to join Top 50 Farmers. “As a small regenerative farm, it helps to get more visibility and show how what we are doing is making a difference and deserves to be supported. We want to show the need and importance of small projects like this.”

From her kitchen, Anna looks out on a field still growing conventional corn and potatoes. She dreams of taking this land on and turning it organic so everything around them is regenerative. She is already talking with the farmer who leases the land now. One day she and Jozefien would love a small bistro in the nearby city too. “I dream of making this connection visible in the city as well,” Anna says — another table where their food and their story can travel a little further.

For Anna, it always comes back to that table. “I farm and cook because it's what I love to do,” Anna says, “but also because I believe this transition is needed to make this world a better place.” At De Keukentafel, farming and cooking become one thing again, grown, harvested, cooked, and shared in the very same place.

Written by Top 50 Farmers and Helianthi Psaropoulou Heilmann