Amsterdam Foodie

My sister-in-law once said that she always imagines me living this Sex-and-the-City lifestyle in Amsterdam… Not wanting to disappoint, I make it my mission to live up to this reputation. How well I do on the sex aspect is not the subject of this blog post. But I do know a good Cosmo when I taste one. Which brings us onto my fourth FAQ…

Question: where can we have a proper girls’ night out with cocktails and everything?

Answer: look no further than my top five Amsterdam cocktail bars…

1. Door 74: causing more than a stir (possibly a shake?) when it opened, Door 74 owned Amsterdam’s underground scene for – ooh – all of two months. It’s exclusive, but only in the sense that you have to know where it is, and you have to book. There’s no entrance fee, but drinks aren’t cheap. They are, however, bloody lovely. And this is one of the few bars in Amsterdam where you can get dressed up New-York style without feeling silly.

2. Vesper: somehow related to Door 74 in a way that I don’t seem to be able to verify via the usual wonder that is Google, Vesper is smaller, cuter and more local. But the drinks are no less fabulous (and I have a crush on the barman).

3. Harry’s Bar: the original cocktail bar in Amsterdam, Harry’s still has an old-world charm that cannot be emulated by its newer rivals. The waiters wear white suits, the punters drink at dark tables, and you feel compelled to order drinks like Old Fashioneds… Only downside is the whole place smells really odd. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

4. Little Buddha: a feast for the senses (or an attack on them, depending on how you look at it), Little Buddha is all Asian-themed kitsch and red shiny things. Luckily, one of the red shiny things is an amazing chilli and red fruit cocktail that has me totally addicted.

5. Feijoa: admittedly, I was struggling to find a fifth bar for my top five, and it was a tie between Feijoa and Marquee, but since the latter is actually a restaurant as well as a bar, I thought I’d save it for a review later. The unpronounceable Feijoa is all rather ad-agency and beautiful-people, but the cocktails I had were creative and seasonal. I may be being blind, but I can’t find a website to give you… address is Vijzelstraat 39.

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Restaurant: Pompstation (European)    
Zeeburgerdijk 52, (Oost/Watergraaf) 692 2888 website Book now

Restaurant: Elkaar (European)    
Alexanderplein 6, (Oost/Watergraaf) 330 7559 website Book now

Restaurant: Koh-I-Noor (Indian)    
Westermarkt 29, (Jordaan) 623 3133 website

Restaurant: Het Schoolhuis (Lunch cafe)    
Dorpsstraat 38, (Noord) 490 4414 website

Those of you who subscribe to my monthly newsletter will know that my professional circumstances are in a bit of a transition phase at the moment. Being the Amsterdam Foodie isn’t a full-time occupation (or rather, sometimes it feels like it is, but it’s not the kind of occupation that pays the bills) so for the last four-and-a-half years I’ve also worked as a writer in a tiny communications agency in the centre of the city. It’s been the one constant in a life that has otherwise been full of change and new experiences. It was no light decision, then, to accept a new job writing for a corporate giant (albeit a food-related one) employing thousands of people in several countries. I am nervous about it, to say the least.

But before I start, I have two weeks of holiday. And what better way to fill my time than to do what foodies do best: eat. It’s Restaurant Week at the moment, which is helpful, and I’ve had visitors, so there’s been no shortage of restaurants to review…

Pompstation

It was SAIL 2010 last weekend, so various restaurants had special seafood menus – Pompstation being one of them. We entered the warehouse-chic building to see a DJ’s hefty decks alongside a similarly large table arrayed with fruit de mer. Clearly, we had to eat lobster. Baby lobsters were €22 each, which was good value (in relative terms), and came with samphire, sea aster, tarragon butter, chips and bearnaise sauce. I rather wished the lobsters weren’t so baby though.

Before that, we’d eaten starters of a potato and bayonne ham terrine (tasty, truffle-y, but a bit more potato-y than I’d expected) and cod carpaccio with mini-scallops in an orange dressing (fresh, zingy and generous). With a couple of exceptions (the addition of random deep-fried potato matchsticks to every dish, for instance), the food was good quality. It was the service (surprise surprise) that let the place down. We were brought the wrong wine but charged for the wine we’d actually ordered; we were ignored when it came to dessert time (meaning we didn’t actually order dessert in the end); and the waitress unconcernedly poured our wine like she was pouring shot glasses on a bar: half of it ended up on the table. As a venue, however, it’s a good night out.

Elkaar

Nicola and I decided to ‘do lunch’. It’s Restaurant Week, so a three-course lunch (plus two amuses bouche) costs €20, which is definitely good value in a pricer place like Elkaar. Sadly, we were the only people in the restaurant, which just goes to show that even capital-city restaurants with top marks from people like Johannes van Dam struggle to get bums on seats at lunchtime.

They served us a sort of deconstructed caprese salad in a glass (tomato mousse, basil oil, creamy tomato foam) and a salty, bright green, foamy soup as amuses. The soup was supposed to be courgette (I think) but I wasn’t crazy about it. The starter was interesting (and I mean interesting in a positive, non-British way), comprising tuna tartar, garlic crème brulee and clam bitterballen. The combination was a little odd, but the individual parts were well made. I probably wouldn’t have ordered our main course had we had a choice, because it involved mushroom ravioli, chanterelles and morels (embarrassingly, mushroom hatred is my guilty food secret) so I can’t really comment on whether they were any good or not. The guinea fowl, however, was delicious: crispy skinned, tender and sitting in just enough meaty jus to moisten the potatoes and beans. I expect Nicola liked dessert best, however, as it involved chocolate in its every constituent part: dark bombe, white mousse, and shards of chocolate and caramel in ice cream.

The service was pretty good, but then again you’d expect that since we were the only two customers.

Koh-I-Noor

It’s hard to find decent Indian food in Amsterdam, but Koh-I-Noor is one of the better places I’ve tried. We ordered chicken saag (spinach), lamb dhansak (lentil curry) and a spicy aubergine dish. My only criticism was that the chicken saag was far too salty, but the other two dishes were medium-hot and full of flavour. And didn’t all taste the same, which is a trap that many Indians here seem to fall into. What’s more, dinner was only about €20, which is just as well when you’re temporarily unemployed.

Het Schoolhuis

Not technically in Amsterdam, het Schoolhuis is in Holysloot – accessible via a picturesque bike ride into Waterland. Or probably by car, if you happen to have one. I always seem to end up there halfway round one of the fiets routes that I do now and again when the weather’s nice and I have visitors. We ate paninis and ciabattas with fresh sheep’s cheese from Dikoeve farm just down the road in Ransdorp. You can’t get more local than that. And they do great appeltaart, too.

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Well, they weren’t really. Victoria’s, that is. They were Esther’s plums. Esther is my colleague who has this crazy thing called a garden (she doesn’t live in Amsterdam) and in that garden is a plum tree. Once upon a time, she brought her own body weight in plums to the office and said, ‘Vicky – take them away. I am all plummed out.’

So I called Mr Foodie and consulted him about making jam, and he consulted Mrs Beeton (who, for those of you who didn’t grow up in middle-class suburban England under the ministries of a certain age of parent, wrote a book called The Book of Household Management Comprising Information for the Mistress, which is pretty much the antithesis of everything I believe about women and domesticity, but I will admit, she does know a thing or two about jam…). And then I took my biggest saucepan and obscene quantities of sugar and the aforementioned mountain of plums, and I boiled and boiled and did things with thermometers and saucers. And frankly I had no idea how to tell when the nuclear fruit cauldron was ready, so at some point I gave up, only to realise that I didn’t have any jam jars. And the jam was actually more of a preserve, being rather looser in consistency than proper jam, but no matter… I’m sure Mrs B would’ve been proud. Or maybe just scandalised that I wasn’t married.

But the point I’m trying to get to in all of this (and frankly you deserve a present if you’ve read this far) is that I now have three jars of Victoria’s Plum Preserve to give away. And you – oh you lucky, lucky readers – can win one. There are a few ways you can do this:

1. Leave a comment on this post
2. Retweet this post on your Twitter account
3. Bribe me with food

The first/funniest/coolest responses will be announced via various social media, and a jar of the Amsterdam Foodie’s very own plum preserve will wing its way to you…

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Restaurant: Cafe van Puffelen (Dutch eetcafe)    
Prinsengracht 375, (Jordaan) 624 6270 website Book now

For some reason, gay men are crazy about me. They’re so much more crazy about me than straight men it’s not even funny. On Saturday night, one of them said to me, in all seriousness: ‘Vicky, I think I’ve become a little bit obsessed with you’. He was gorgeous and American and had electric blue eyes and I wished – just wished – that I got anything like that amount of attention from someone who might be into girls.

But still, attention’s attention and I can’t get enough of it, so imagine my joy when I was invited out on a dinner date with no less than eight men on Friday night. I picked the restaurant, obviously (it was Open, in case you’re interested). They brought me presents of hand-illustrated erotica.

The next day, of course, was Gay Pride here in Amsterdam, which is why they were all over from London in the first place. Having already attended a pre-Pride party with them the night before, they invited me for drinks in the afternoon at their suite in the Negen Straatjes (it rained on our parade), and proceeded to develop a strange fascination with my breasts. (I think I might be over-sharing again.)

Anyway, after all this excitement, I was very hungry and a little bit partied out. So a couple of friends and I decided to head down the road to Cafe van Puffelen for a bit of a post-Pride chill-out-and-debrief. Puffelen is the kind of cosy that makes more sense in winter than summer, but it was a rainy night and the terrace was not an option; it all felt strangely comforting and womb-like.

I had a merguez lamb burger with mozzarella, potato wedges and various sauces. It was mildly spicy, generously portioned, and spot-hittingly satisfying. Although I still proceeded to eat half my friend’s chicken afterwards. We drank Rioja and discussed boys (gay, straight or otherwise) until we were almost falling asleep on our plates…

Having not managed to set the world to rights, nor unravel the mystery that is men, the only conclusion we could draw from the weekend was this. Fact: if you’re a straight man, pretend to be gay. Women will let you stare at/touch/take photos of their breasts for no apparent reason. Even self-proclaimed feminists. It’s all very odd.

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Admittedly, being a foodie doesn’t necessarily make me an expert on bars. But let’s face it: most foodies know how to enjoy the good life – in more ways than one. So here’s the fourth in my series of posts answering my readers’ FAQs – this time on my second favourite hobby: drinking.

Question: Where can we go to get decent beer (basically not Heineken)?

Answer: Two of these places are local breweries, two are Belgian brown cafes (and believe me, the Belgians know their beers) and one is an American beer bar. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, ok?

1. Brouwerij het IJ (Funenkade 7): housed under a windmill in Amsterdam Oost (east of the centre), the brewery serves its own-brewed beers and various lekker hapjes (including my favourite sheep’s cheese from Dikhove in Ransdorp) between 3 and 8 pm daily. You can take a tour round the brewery too.

2. Brouwerij de Prael: in the heart of the Red Light District, de Prael brewery was set up to employ people suffering from psychiatric problems. In the proeflokaal at Warmoesstraat 15, you can taste the beers named after famous Dutch singers; the brewery itself is located at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 30.

3. Gollem (Raamsteeg 4): dark and musty, this beer bar down an alleyway off the Spuistraat demands that you drink out of one of those funny test-tube-shaped glasses in a wooden stand. I think the beer’s called Kwak and you’ll spill it everywhere, but it’s just sort of tradition. You’ll understand when you go there, I promise.

4. Zotte (Raamstraat 29): not to be confused with Raamsteeg, this Belgian brown cafe is actually in a completely different location near the Leidseplein. The food is decent too.

5. Beer Temple (Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 250): the most recent to open, this American beer bar totally changed my perception of Stateside beer. No Budweiser here; all small, specialist brews that have been specially imported. They even have their own house beer: Tempelbier. Just tell them what you like and they’ll make you recommendations – wow, American service to boot!

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Restaurant: Cafe Toussaint (Dutch eetcafe)    
Bosboom Toussaintstraat 26, (Oud-West) 685 0737 website

The first time I went to Cafe Toussaint was for the Netherlands vs. Uruguay semi-final of the World Cup. I couldn’t see much of the café itself (it was covered in orange) and nor was food an option (it was beer or nothing) but something about the atmosphere (and – admittedly – the hotness of the waiters) made me want to go back.

So last Thursday I returned, this time with two friends, to a much more civilized Café Toussaint, but with no less attractive waiters. My friends made me promise not to write about what we discussed, so I’ll get on with the food bit.

I ordered guinea fowl, which was gorgeously moist and comforting. It came with a creamy truffle sauce and lightly fried gnocchi, all of which were fairly rich and fairly delicious. My only issue was with the cabbage, which was green (not offering a lot in the way of contrasting colour) and simply boiled (not offering a lot in the way of contrasting flavour). I’d have served it with red cabbage simmered in spices, vinegar and orange peel. But then that’s me.

My two friends both had the rack of lamb (succulent and rare) with good, hearty mashed potato, fennel and slightly hard peas. The plates were piled high, but they did an admirable job of gnawing the bones down to the very last scraps of meat. My mother would’ve been proud.

Toussaint orders in a couple of their desserts from Holtkamp, so we took two lemon meringue tarts to share. Afterwards, we realised we’d been a little dim in ordering two of the same instead of sampling the chocolate tart as well, but (try as we might) we could hardly blame that on the staff.

Dinner was accompanied by a very acceptable bottle of French merlot, and came to a little under €35 each. There may have been no goals scored this time, but it was definitely worth the return visit.

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