Amsterdam Foodie

Restaurant: La Storia della Vita (Italian)    
Weteringschans 171, (De Pijp) 623 4251 website

One of those weird “talents” (if you can call it a talent) that no one really knows I have is the under-appreciated art of napkin folding. My parents and I used to stay in a particular hotel in Switzerland in the 1980s where the restaurant staff would fold the napkins into a different shape every evening for dinner. Being a bit of a geek, I used to carefully deconstruct each one to figure out how it was folded, and my hotelier father subsequently gave me a very 70s-looking book on the subject. My napkin-folding abilities eventually became one of those family rituals, which means that my Dad (and now my big brother, too) still asks me to show my niece how to fold the napkins every year before Christmas dinner. As knowledge to pass down to your progeny goes, it’s bordering on completely useless, but in lieu of an aptitude for rocket science I guess it’ll have to do…

So the first thing that struck me about La Storia della Vita was its 1980s-style, heavily starched, fan-shaped napkins. I hadn’t seen them anywhere other than the Hampton family dinner table in about 20 years, and yet they weren’t the slightest bit out of place among the rest of the décor. Which says a lot. I’m not a particularly visual person, but swathes of red velvet spring to memory, as well as leather armchairs, chandeliers, and other throwbacks to a bygone era. It was kitsch, but consistent.

Fortunately, the food involved neither prawn cocktail nor black forest gateau, but fairly classic Italian fare. I went for the mixed antipasti to sample a range of different ingredients. It didn’t comprise quite what I’d been told it would, but it all tasted good: grilled vegetables, prosciutto, salami, octopus carpaccio, and very fresh seafood. I also stole some mozzarella from my friend’s plate – it wasn’t as soft as some versions I’ve tasted, but it had a good buffalo flavour.

The ravioli was a trio of ricotta, artichoke and mushroom fillings. I asked if it was possible to order the ricotta and artichoke, and to skip the mushroom version. What I got seemed only to be the artichoke variety, although given my addiction to artichokes I didn’t mind missing out on the ricotta.

For dessert, I had the panna cotta, which was satisfyingly wobbly but could have done without the over-sweet, synthetic-tasting red sauce. Far better was the chocolate soufflé with ice cream that one of my girl friends was kind enough to give me a coveted spoonful of.

Sadly, prices were rather more 2012 than 1987, with three courses plus several glasses of Sicilian red wine coming to €57 each including tip. But for the food and service we had (some of the waiters were rather more attentive to their signoras than others) plus some unobtrusive entertainment in the form of a piano player, it felt like modern-day money well spent.

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In my last post on this subject, I explained the concept behind my cookbook. Since then, a lot of people have been buying shares via TenPages, which is fabulous! Here are some of the top questions I’ve been asked, answered in English. More FAQs are available in Dutch on TenPages.

Q. How do I buy shares via the website?

A. Here’s my step-by-step guide:

• Go to: http://www.tenpages.com/manuscript/vicky_hampton_s_working_lunch_1
• Click on the orange button: “Koop een aandeel”
• A pop-up will open telling you that you can either proceed directly to buy the shares or you can put them in your shopping trolley while you look at other books you may want to buy shares in
• Assuming you only want to buy shares in Vicky Hampton’s Working Lunch at this moment, click “Aandeel kopen”
• Select the number of shares you want to invest in by clicking the arrows up and down next to “Aantal aandelen”
• Once you’ve selected the number of shares, click “Naar 2: Jouw gegevens”
• At this point, you’re being asked to choose whether you already have a TenPages account, or whether you are new to TenPages
• Assuming you do not already have an account, select “Ik ben nieuw bij TenPages.com” and you will see a list of fields you have to fill in:

1. First name
2. Surname
3. Username (you can invent anything you like!)
4. Language (Dutch is the only option – this doesn’t make any difference to the shares you are buying or the language of the book, so don’t worry!)
5. Country (again, a very limited selection, so it doesn’t matter which you choose)
6. Email address
7. Password
8. Gender
9. Tick the first box to confirm your agreement to the Terms & Conditions
10. Un-tick the second box if you don’t want to receive emails from TenPages

• Then click “Naar 3. Betaalmethode”
• On the next screen, you need to fill in your (Dutch) bank account number and account name (in that order) if you have one. You do not actually need to pay using this account, but this is the account that will be used to return dividends to you if (when!) the book has been published and is on sale. It is also the account that will be used to return 80% of your investment to you if I don’t meet the investment target.
• If you do not have a Dutch bank account, you can leave these fields blank and still proceed to the next screen. However, you will then be making a donation rather than investment, as your dividends/returned money will NOT be accessible to you! (You can only reinvest it in other manuscripts on TenPages.)
• Directly beneath the bank account fields, click on the first option to pay by iDeal, credit card or bank transfer, and then click on your chosen payment option
• Then click “Naar 4. Bevestigen”
• After checking the details, click “Bevestig” to confirm the purchase
• Follow the instructions for your payment method as per usual credit card/bank purchases

Tip! If you use Google Chrome, the browser will automatically translate the Dutch website into English for you!

Q. What are my returns if the requisite number of shares is sold (2,000 shares) and the book is published?

A. The exact returns depend on various factors, such as the retail price of the book, the number of copies sold, and of course the quantity of shares you have. But in any case, 10% of the sales will directly return to the shareholders as dividend.

To give you an example of how it works:

Imagine you have 20 shares in a book. The book is sold for the retail price of €20, and 20,000 copies are sold. You would earn: 20 shares x 1/2,000th x 10% x €20 = €400.

(Don’t ask me how I came to this figure – I am just translating what’s on the TenPages website!)

Q. What is the risk if the full number of shares necessary to get the book published (2,000 shares) is not sold? Do I get my money back?

A. You will get 80% of your money back.

Q. The book is available in Dutch and English, but what about the shares? Do I need to choose whether to buy shares in the Dutch or English version?

A. No, it’s not possible to choose. But it doesn’t matter: all the money goes into the same pot, and it won’t affect how many Dutch and English copies are printed.

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Restaurant: My Table (International)    
, 06 2704 7702 website

A few weeks ago, my chef friend Fong (the brains and the master stock behind Bao Project) invited me to a dinner. Since every event she’s ever invited me to has been so amazingly delicious I’ve almost made myself physically sick from gorging so hard, I clicked ‘join’ without reading anything more. Like, not-a-thing.

Then Tuesday rolled around and Facebook told me I had an event to go to. Oh yes! I remembered, with excitement, and clicked on the invitation to note down the address. Off I cycled, by myself, to the venue, assuming that it would be some kind of underground-dining, apartment-restaurant, Hidden Kitchen-type thingy with about eight or ten people who wouldn’t know each other.

I locked up my bike outside a large, orange-lit space that would later turn out to be Tommy Hilfiger’s canteen (posh canteens these fashion types have, I tell you!) and ventured hesitantly inside… ‘I’m looking for number 5? I’m going to a dinner at My Table?’ The smiling, black-clothed hostess welcomed me: ‘Oh yes, you’re in the right place! What’s your name and how many people are in your booking?’

Fuck, went my brain as I looked past the reservations book towards a menacing herd of dining tables. I’m at a restaurant that could seat – what, 70 people? – all by myself after working 14 hours the day before to meet a deadline, feeling about 98% short of the charm and social skills that this situation was clearly going to require. I scanned the people at the bar. Fuckety-fuck, my brain confirmed. I didn’t recognise a soul.

‘I’m Vicky, and – umm – I kind of misunderstood the concept I think, so I’m here on my own… is anyone else on their own?’ I asked hopefully. ‘A couple of people!’ she said brightly. ‘I tell you what? Why don’t I introduce you to some of the people on your table?’

‘Yes!’ I gasped gratefully and desperately, as she led me in the direction of my first drink. Christ, I was going to need it… As I waited for my sake-lemongrass-wasabi concoction, I got chatting to a British interior designer. And then, while we were talking, one of her friends turned up – another Brit, as it happens – plus an editor I know through freelancing, followed by the Dutch boyfriend of the second woman. Not long after, two of the chefs (Fong, plus My Table creator, Claire) popped out of the kitchen to say hello to us. And all at once the evening started to make a lot more sense.

The eating bit made a good deal of sense too. It was a five-course tasting menu, which was served to everyone simultaneously. No taking of orders, no timing different dishes for different tables, no difficult choices to make. Just simple – and very good – Japanese fodder.

The meal (and apologies it’s taken me so long to get to the food bit) started with two types of sushi: one traditional maki with salmon; the other a more experimental ‘inside-out’ roll involving grilled eel, avocado and a slightly sweet, creamy dressing with the consistency of mayonnaise. The table plan had gone a little awry by the time we sat down, so my table ended up with an extra portion. We weren’t complaining.

Next up was a noodle broth with tofu and thinly sliced beef, which was simple and palate cleansing, followed by four pieces of exquisitely seared sliced tuna with a dressing that was both tangy and creamy. The menu tells me it had something to do with shiso and ponzo. Not having the faintest idea what either shiso or ponzo is, I’ll take the chef’s word for it.

Seeing as I’m addicted to pork, I was most excited about the next dish: sticky pork ribs with miso sauce. They did not disappoint on the stickiness and flavour front, although the meat on mine was a little dry.

I like tasting menus a lot. I like them even more when they don’t involve dessert. The chef later told me that since she always finds Asian desserts a bit of an anti-climax (mainly because they’re not traditionally a part of the meal) she decided to go savoury from start to finish. The last dish involved more noodles, quail, soy beans and shitake mushrooms. I don’t like mushrooms so I didn’t expect this to be my favourite dish, but I felt like (mushrooms aside) it lacked something to pull it all together. It ate like several constituent parts – albeit good constituent parts – that didn’t quite add up to the whole. Interestingly, when the chef came over to our table at the end of the meal, she volunteered the fact that the dish hadn’t worked out as well as she’d wanted. It didn’t change the dish, but it did reinforce my good opinion of the kitchen.

The menu cost €40 per person, with all cocktails coming in at €7.50, plus various reasonably priced wines available by the glass or bottle. You can (and frequently do) pay a lot more for a lot less in Amsterdam.

As I hopped back on my bike at gone 11 pm having said goodbye to half a dozen people I’d never met just a few hours previously, I reflected on the experience: OK, so not a lot of people had come by themselves, but I didn’t feel like the social leper I thought I would. Quite the opposite in fact: not only had I genuinely enjoyed myself; I felt that surge of adrenaline I used to get when I first moved to Amsterdam and every night out was a little exercise in personal networking.

I’m not saying that going out for dinner by myself is likely to become a regular occurrence, but the staff and the guests at My Table make it the kind of place where meeting like-minded people is easy. And even after six years in a city, you can never have too many friends, right?

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I’ve worked in offices my entire career. And as anyone who sits behind a computer all day will agree, lunch is often the highlight of the working day… not so in the Netherlands! A singular lack of decent sandwich bars, soup shops, salad bars or jacket-potato joints leaves you with three options: visit the horrendous office canteen (if indeed you even have one), take far more than your allotted half-hour lunch break and try your luck with the speed of a service in a local cafe, or make your own… I did the latter. My colleagues got curious and started asking me for recipes (and, occasionally, to make lunch for them, too) so I began to write them down. And lo, a book was born!

Vicky Hampton’s Working Lunch is a cookbook for everyone whose workplace has a kitchen, even if that kitchen has nothing more than a watched-pot-never-boils kettle, a Jurassic toaster, and a surface on which to chop things. It’s for people who are bored of overpriced, ubiquitous ‘ham-kaas broodjes’ and packet soups from the canteen. It’s for busy, working types who are nonetheless keen to eat healthy, simple food made from scratch, but who don’t have the time or resources to spend hours in the kitchen. The 50-something recipes cover salads & dressings, bread-based meals, couscous & pulses, smoothies & soups, and some more adventurous recipes in the decadently named ‘Pimp my lunch’ chapter. The book will be available in both Dutch and English.

How to invest in the concept

In an attempt to persuade the best publisher I can find to help me make this happen, I am crowd-funding the book through selling shares in it. Each share costs €5, and once I’ve sold 2,000 of them, the money raised is put towards the publishing costs (photography, printing, etc). When enough books have been sold, investors make their money back with interest. Needless to say, I would be extremely grateful for your investment!

To buy shares, visit TenPages and click ‘Koop een aandeel’. More instructions and answers to FAQs (in English!) to follow in my next post… Thank you for your support!

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Restaurant: Canal House (European)    
Keizersgracht 148, (Jordaan) 622 5182 website

Saturday night we felt like getting a bit poshed up. Frocks and shirts and suchlike. Cocktails and a canal view seemed only fitting…

Canal House (which does what it says on the tin: it’s a beautiful converted town house in prime position on the Keizersgracht) has a rather lovely bar and front lounge, just made for swanning around feeling richer and more important than one really is (and using pronouns like ‘one’)… I started with a cucumber mint martini, which was fresh and stronger than it sounded, and followed up with a generous glass (as in, about a quarter of a bottle) of prosecco. Dinner was off to a good start…

It got better still when my starter arrived: duck liver terrine that tasted so much like foie gras I think they made a mistake on the menu. I wasn’t complaining. It came with a classic accompaniment of brioche, prune compote and a tongue-tingling smatter of rock salt. De-lish.

There was one bum note in my main course, which was supposed to be halibut with shrimp and spinach risotto, and a red wine reduction. It looked like just that, but all I could taste was the parmesan in the rice, which was so overpowering it turned the whole dish into a teenage boy’s sock drawer. Luckily, my dining buddy was willing to swap (perhaps his nose was less sensitive to it, having once been a teenage boy himself?), so I tucked into his corn-fed chicken and honey-glazed carrots with aplomb (as you do, when wearing a posh frock).

After cocktails, prosecco and a bottle of Valpolicella, we were a little too drunk to appreciate dessert, so we shared a portion of honey ice cream and a sorbet that tasted of cinnamon and something that could have been mango or could have been peach. I was too tipsy to tell the difference by this point.

Not that that stopped me supping an after-dinner cocktail to round off the meal. Needless to say, I can’t remember what was in that either, but it came in a martini glass and featured lashings of lime so all was good with the world.

The damage was around €80 each, which wasn’t insignificant but then again at least 50% of the bill must have been the booze. And it was thoroughly worth it. Even the service was posh.

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