About Tone & Taste
About Tone & Taste — The Recipe & Travel Blog
Globally inspired cooking made practical, approachable and realistic for everyday kitchens, built from years inside real kitchens.
The chef
Reiss
Experience
18+ years
Background
Executive chef
Focus
Practical home cooking
On this page: Professional kitchens · Our roots · Cooking through travel · What we’re about · Our approach
Tone & Taste is run by chef Reiss and Anouk: one English, one Dutch-Indonesian, and both happiest when we’re somewhere new, finding out what people there really eat.
The idea is simple: globally inspired cooking that works in an everyday kitchen, without losing the flavor and culture that make a dish worth cooking.
Reiss has over 18 years of professional kitchen experience, from high-volume hospitality and executive chef roles to running a health-focused meal prep business.
The recipes come from years inside real kitchens and from cooking our way through Malta, Greece, Tunisia and Sri Lanka, not from trends.
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From Professional Kitchens to Practical Cooking
Food started professionally long before Tone & Taste existed.
Years spent working through demanding hospitality environments shaped the foundation of how cooking is approached here today: consistency, flavor balance, speed, organization, and understanding what actually works in a kitchen under pressure.
Over time, that experience developed into executive chef positions managing multiple kitchens simultaneously, overseeing teams, systems, prep operations, menu development, and high-volume service.
But the biggest shift came from realizing that great food does not need to stay inside restaurants.
The meal prep chapter
One of the most influential chapters was building and running a health-focused meal prep business that revolved around structured nutrition, large-scale preparation, and practical cooking systems. The business operated with rotating menus built around macronutrients, flavor variety, and consistency at scale.
That experience changed the entire perspective on cooking.
What food should be
It became less about creating complicated plates for presentation and more about understanding how to make food practical, repeatable, flavorful, healthier, and achievable for real people cooking at home.
Many of the recipes on Tone & Taste still carry that philosophy today, especially our healthy cooking recipes.
The focus is not unnecessary complexity. The focus is food people will actually cook again.
An English and Dutch-Indonesian Kitchen
Our kitchen has never belonged to just one country.
Reiss is English and learned his craft in professional kitchens. Anouk is Dutch-Indonesian and learned to cook from her grandmother from a young age. Indonesian family cooking was part of everyday life at home, and that feel for spice, rice and food shared around the table still runs through how we cook today.
Put an English chef and a Dutch-Indonesian family kitchen together and you get a home that was never going to stick to one cuisine. It is also why we travel the way we do: we love being somewhere new and finding out how people there really cook.
Cooking Through Travel
Travel is what we love most, and it shaped the cooking even further. Years of living aboard and moving between Mediterranean ports meant smaller kitchens, less predictable ingredients and a lot of market shopping.
Every country brings different produce, spices and local dishes. Markets become part of the routine, and every new place is a chance to see how people actually eat at home.
That is where the food on this site comes from: Maltese baked rice and pastizzi, Greek cooking from two years on Crete and summers in the Ionian islands, Tunisian spice, and the curries and string hoppers of Sri Lanka. More kitchens are added as we cook our way through them.
What Tone & Taste Is About
Tone & Taste combines chef-developed recipes, globally inspired cooking, food culture, practical techniques, and travel-based inspiration. The goal is simple:
Make Global Cooking More Accessible
A lot of international cooking online feels intimidating. Tone & Taste focuses on making global flavors approachable without stripping away what makes them interesting.
Recipes are designed to work in normal kitchens using realistic ingredients and practical methods whenever possible.
Help People Cook With More Confidence
Cooking becomes easier when people understand why flavors work together, how techniques affect food, and how recipes can adapt.
Rather than overcomplicating dishes, Tone & Taste focuses on helping readers naturally build confidence through cooking itself.
Balance Flavor and Practicality
Professional kitchens often prioritize presentation and complexity. Home cooking requires balance.
Recipes here are created with real life in mind: weeknight cooking, smaller kitchens, limited time, accessible ingredients, and repeatability.
Explore Food Beyond Recipes
Food is connected to culture, travel, history, and experience.
That’s why Tone & Taste also explores traditional dishes, local food guides, regional cooking influences, travel-inspired recipes, and the stories behind cuisines around the world.
A Professional Background Without Restaurant Pretension
One thing Tone & Taste intentionally avoids is treating professional cooking as something exclusive.
Professional kitchen experience matters because it builds an understanding of structure, flavor development, preparation, consistency, and the efficiency needed to produce food at a high standard every day. But good food should still feel achievable.
Not every recipe on Tone & Taste is strictly traditional, and not every recipe is designed like fine dining. That’s intentional. The aim is to create recipes inspired by real cuisines and professional techniques while adapting them for modern home cooking.
01
Simplify
Sometimes that means simplifying techniques.
02
Lighten
Sometimes it means making healthier adjustments.
03
Combine
Sometimes it means combining influences discovered through years of cooking and traveling.
The priority is always creating food that delivers strong flavor, stays practical and usable in a real kitchen, takes authentic inspiration from global cuisines, and remains enjoyable for people to actually cook and eat.
The Cooking Philosophy
At its core, Tone & Taste follows a simple philosophy: cook food that tastes good, learn through experience and keep it practical. Stay curious about global flavors. And make recipes people actually want to cook more than once.
Whether it’s a lighter comfort dish, a recipe picked up on the road or a traditional meal with a simpler method, every recipe has to deliver real flavor and work in a normal kitchen.
Start exploring
Recipes, travel guides and beginner guides
Destination guide
Malta Travel & Food Guide
Destination guide
Sri Lanka Travel & Food Guide
Cooking guide
How to Start Cooking Global Dishes at Home