It started in Vinkeveen, on a little island, where Maurice often cooked on the plaat— a steel griddle with a wood fire underneath. Friends kept saying: “this is so good, you should do something with it.” When he'd sold his company and finally had time, he did: cooking on the griddle, filming and editing — and so @onderderookvanamsterdam began, with exactly zero followers. The winter cold soon moved him indoors. And the name? Vinkeveen lies just outside Amsterdam — onder de rook van Amsterdam. These days Maurice cooks in the heart of the city, but the name stays.

Outside the kitchen, many Dutch people know Maurice as the man behind the Wuppies — the fluffy collectible figures Albert Heijn gave away to millions of customers during the 2006 World Cup. It was a commercial hit that made his name in the Dutch promotional-products industry.

Around 2005, Maurice took over Interall Group in Amsterdam. He rebuilt the company into WoW Sustainable Products — a 98% sustainable portfolio within four years (waste, recycled, biobased, natural). In February 2022 he sold the whole thing to Clipper B.V., part of the Plato Group. A full career, wrapped up.

In 2015 his debut novel Natte Lunch came out, self-published under the Manypieces label. Intended as the first part of a trilogy. Book launch in Amsterdam. He loved the writing, but the book was no success — just 2,200 copies sold in all.

Since early 2025, Maurice shares what lands on his table on his Instagram and TikTok channel @onderderookvanamsterdam. 100% organic, unprocessed. Mediterranean-leaning — Italian, Spanish, French — with Dutch comfort. Captions alternate between English and Dutch; never mixed in the same sentence.

Since December 2025, an official partnership with Ekoplaza Foodmarqt — the first joint video was a coq au vin.

Maurice is one of the founders of the Climates Foundation. With eleven friends he bought 53 hectares of depleted farmland in the south of Spain, where they have planted 23,000 trees— to offset their own CO2 emissions, and to bring nature back. And it's working: the land is alive again. Partridges, rabbits, foxes and wild boar roam it; birds of prey and snakes have moved back in; and the small life that holds it all together — bees, butterflies, worms and countless birds — has returned too. This is also why 50% of the profit from all Onder de rook van Amsterdam products, the cookbook included, goes to the Climates Foundation.

The aim of the Climates Foundation is to plant as many trees as sustainably possible on former agricultural land. This creates local cooling, reduces CO2 and should ensure that the rainwater is retained in the soil. Animals will return, as well as insects. In short, we're recreating nature. The aim is to reforest about 200 hectares within a few years and to bring nature back to the surrounding area.

From the sustainable pivot at Interall, to 100% organic home cooking, to 53 hectares of nature restoration: the same mission — to inspire as many people as possible with unprocessed food, treating what the land gives with respect. Maurice's words, not ours.