Please note that since writing this blog post, Bidou has closed down
Please note that since writing this blog post, Van Hoeck has closed down
“Do I need to make a reservation?” is a question I often get asked, which strikes me as a rather peculiar one since I own neither a) a crystal ball, nor b) the reservations book of any restaurant in Amsterdam. But since this reality occurs to no one, my answer is always yes. Because where, logically, is the harm in calling to reserve a table? Especially compared to the disappointment of turning up at your chosen dinner destination only to find you have a two-hour wait…
And yet, despite my own advice, I found myself reservation-less in the Pijp on Friday evening – hungry after a long week at work and a launch party for the latest foodie app, Scrambled (which will no doubt be hitting your iPhones soon). We tried to get into Balti House for an Indian curry, but were faced with too long a wait; The Dutch Co. was a non-starter too, even though I swear it only opened about a week ago and surely shouldn’t be that damn popular already? And so we ended up in a dubious-smelling eetcafe called van Hoeck, wondering why a simple satay was nearly €20 in a place that whiffed of toilet cleaner. Ah, I guess there was a reason why they had an empty table for four on a Friday night after all…
I had the over-priced satay anyway – mostly because it seemed like the hardest option to screw up. To be fair, the meat wasn’t bad (although I’ve never had a beef satay in an eetcafe before) but it came with a quantity of chips that it was possible to count. Probably on the fingers of one hand. All three meat dishes (the others had steak) came with a similarly quantifiable number of green beans, only mine had been covered in an odd spicy sauce in an attempt to differentiate them as “Indonesian”. One of my friends took a risk and ordered the aubergine vege dish. I took one look at the spongy, under-cooked, pale-fleshed centre of the aubergine and didn’t bother asking to try it.
