Still, on the plus side, there’s a trip to Krakow to look forward to (expect reviews of cherry vodka and – well, whatever one eats with cherry vodka!), an evening at the ballet and… and Vacherin Mont d’Or cheese. I swear it’s sent by the Goddess of Winter to make all this cold, dark, sleeting misery that bit more bearable.

It’s made in the Alps on the Swiss-French border, only in the winter months, and preserved in a wooden box lined with pine bark. The good stuff is unpasteurised, and carries the Apellation d’Origine Contrôlée label, which means it comes from a specific region and is made using a specific process – much like wine. You can eat it ‘neat’, as it were: at room temperature, with bread. Or – like I did for the first time this year – you can bake it in the oven with a clove or two of garlic and a glass of white wine for about half an hour, till it’s melted to the texture of thick cream… And you don’t even need a fondue kit.

To buy a box from the Noordermarkt will set you back about a tenner. But head down to the cheese stall on the Ten Katestraat market on the corner where it meets the Kinkerstraat and you can pick up a box for a fiver. I went a bit nuts and bought three. And then I wonder why I’m skint…

So, this V-Day, eschew the flowers and Hallmark cards and Valentine menus; invite a mate over and dip into five well-spent euros’ worth of winter luxury… better than a dozen red roses any day.

Restaurant websites: User feedback indicated that people wanted to navigate to a restaurant’s website directly from the review. Now, everywhere you see a little link called ‘website‘, that should be possible. Assuming that a restaurant has a website and I could find it, it’s there for your linking pleasure…

Suggested reviews: The restaurant of the month (which previously appeared only in my recommendations) now appears on the blog and on individual reviews, alongside some suggestions for other reviews that may interest you.

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I’ve said this so many times I sound like a broken record: it does not take much to make me spend money in a restaurant. Offer me an aperitif, I’ll take it. Ask me if I want dessert, there’s a good chance I’ll say yes. I’ve got profit written all over my forehead. And I don’t even see it as up-selling. I genuinely want these things. What I don’t want is to have to make more effort to get them than the people who are paid to sell them to me.

I arrived at Fyra 15 minutes before my friends last night. The waitress took my coat, led me to my table, and disappeared. Not only did I look like Norma no-mates, but I didn’t even get a drink to keep me company. It may be overly British of me, but I don’t want to have to raise my voice and wave my arms in a relatively smart-looking establishment in order to attract sufficient attention to merit a glass of water.

Still, my dining companions arrived eventually and the whole menu/wine-list/drinks thing started happening. Better late than never. We ordered a bottle of Moldovan red, since I’d never had it before, which was good value – luckily, given that we got through three bottles of the stuff. We didn’t study the menu for two long, since the daily fixed menu had already seduced all four of us: three courses for €31 or four for not a lot more. It was a no-brainer.

Salmon tartare and cheese bitterbal

But before the first of our four courses, we received a little amuse. Or two little amuses to be precise: a cheese bitterbal (which consequently tasted like a cross between a bitterbal and a kaastengel) and a delicately flavoured salmon tartare that appeared in a dish that was like a mini version of those silver domes that used to cover plates in hotels in the 80s – unnecessary, but cute.

Scallop, smoked eel and cream sauce

Our starter was a single scallop (which I’d venture was ever so slightly overcooked), with some smoked eel, pickled miniscule mushrooms, micro-shoots (or whatever they’re called these days) and a rather gelatinous sauce that looked and tasted… pale. The whole thing needed to be at once hotter and less cooked, with more flavour in the sauce and less in the vegetables.

Monkfish, chicory and parmesan foam

After this inauspicious start, I must admit things got significantly better. Bread (in the form of mini, salted brioches) was readily replenished and made an excellent sponge for the parmesan foam with which our monkish arrived. The fish sat atop a chunk of bitter roasted chicory and something salty and porky running through the sauce – like pancetta. The four elements together made an excellent combination. So good that I might steal the idea.

Beef, pomme mousseline, savoy cabbage and asparagus with red wine and truffle jus

Our main was simply seasoned and barbecued American beef with a rich, luscious truffle and red wine sauce. The mashed potato and savoy cabbage they came with sound rather pedestrian in comparison, but they formed a sensibly understated backdrop for what was clearly very good beef.

Trio of pineapple and coconut

Before dessert, we had a little glass of apple confit topped with whipped cinnamon cream that tasted very much like my espuma for Winter Hidden Kitchen (for those of you who were there!). Dessert itself focused on pineapple and coconut, which meant that most of the elements on my plate tasted like a Piña Colada. If you like Piña Colada, that’s no bad thing – though some more variation could’ve been no bad thing either.

Dinner came to just over €50 each, including wine and a tip, which felt like good value for what we ate – which is why I’m giving it four stars. But if I have to wait 15 minutes for a drink next time, it won’t be better late than never; it’ll be never again.

I generally seem to judge an eetcafé by its satay (or saté, or however you spell it), largely because I think it’s what people want if they’ve decided to go somewhere cosy and dark and warm. Café Sarphaat’s was really rather good: decently spicy-sweet sauce, chicken that was char-grilled but not dry, crunchy kroepoek and a side of chips and salad.

My friend – who lives just off the Sarphatipark, hence our choice of location – ordered the special: chicken stuffed with blue cheese and (Turkish?!) sausage with andijviestamppot and mustard sauce. Now, I thought andijvie came from the French ‘endive’, which is chicory, but I could’ve sworn this was fennel (aka venkel). Anyway, it all tasted quite nice, though there were a few too many strong flavours competing for attention.

What was really standout about the Sarphaat, however, was the service. Not that it was particularly brilliant, but it didn’t feel like a struggle. It was just… you know, normal. People smiled at me, and brought me drinks. I like that.

Sweet onion, cranberry, ricotta and sage cheesecake

First up, I followed this recipe for a savoury cheesecake. I can’t say it was a huge success, to be honest. If I were to re-write the recipe, I would recommend some serious caramelisation of the onions (i.e. with actual sugar, and probably more onions) as well as the addition of some bacon lardons for saltiness.

Cranberry and white chocolate muffins

Yesterday, I decided to play it safe and pair the cranberries with white chocolate (a match made in Albert Heijn biscuits, which are an office favourite). I roughly followed Ottolenghi’s recipe for blueberry muffins, but then substituted the blueberries for cranberries (obviously) and the apple for white chocolate. When I tasted the mixture, it seemed too sweet, but with the sour bursts of berry running through the muffins once cooked, the white chocolate met its match. Add cup of tea for maximum Sunday-afternoon pleasure.

I just liked the over-exposure on this one...

Ok, so I cracked. I’d just delivered my annual annual report (all 16,000 words of it), I’d had a stressful week at work, I was meeting a drinking buddy in the pub… At some point around 8 o’clock on Friday, my resolve melted – much like the snow outside. It started with one Affligem; it ended dancing round the Waterhole at 3 am, abandoning several glasses of half-drunk Heineken (which I hate, usually, and hated still more the next morning) and wobbling home on the bike, wondering if the aforementioned beers might reappear en route. No, I was not proud of myself. Frailty, thy name is Vicky.

Anyway, in between all this, I managed to go to Harkema for dinner (and – let’s be honest – a few glasses of wine). It’s a big warehouse-sized space, with acoustics to match, filled with beautiful people watching more beautiful people, some of whom I think were supposed to be waiting staff. I’d only been once before a couple of years ago, and only to the bar – its USP is supposed to be its wine list, not that one was particularly forthcoming – next to which the easterly wall is lined entirely with wine bottles. Clearly not the kind of place for a teetotaller.

Entrecote with Hollandaise

Rather unimaginatively, I ordered steak. It was cooked to order, but wasn’t massively tender (I doubt it was originally marbled with much fat) and hadn’t been seasoned. It came with a foamy Hollandaise sauce, good chips (with a sort of mustard-mayo) and a salad whose large, un-chopped leaves inadvertently formed a cup for the vast amounts of dressing.

Chocolate-hazelnut mousse cake with Oreos

Dessert was a chocolate-hazelnut mousse cake with a base of Oreo cookies. Incidentally, I’m not entirely sure why the Oreos were supposed to be a selling point – they taste fake, like most American chocolate and chocolate-based products. The topping lacked depth of flavour as well, although the yoghurty dollop beside it was a welcome contrast. The whole thing made sense in theory; in practice it just needed to be executed with much better ingredients.

Dinner came to €33 each for two courses, plus a fair amount of house wine and including a modest tip. The price is friendly I suppose, given Harkema’s aspirations to trendiness and close-to-Dam location. We also landed a table for eight at 9 o’clock on a Friday – without reservation – which is no mean feat in Amsterdam, and handy to remember.

As for Dry January, I have not entirely given up giving up. But if two weeks’ abstinence results in bingeing and lightweight-ness, I’m not sure that total teetotalism is really for me. And so I return to the biggest piece of common sense my parents ever taught me: everything in moderation. Including moderation itself.

I have made a very rash decision. For various reasons, I stupidly set myself the challenge of not drinking any alcohol for the month of January. It’s not a detox, nor a diet, so don’t panic peeps. Nor is it in any way some kind of New Year’s resolution that I expect to extend past the 1st February. Still, a decision is a decision, and so far I’ve made it through a week. The first few days were ok: I deliberately cooked meals that don’t lend themselves to wine – like curry. But then Friday came and my first big test: a bar followed by an Italian restaurant, with four people I’d never met before. And no friendly Tempranillo to keep me company.

So, when it comes to Cinema Paradiso (the unlikely name of the Italian that witnessed the Amsterdam Foodie’s first tee-total dinner in this chilly city), I can’t comment on the rather expensive bottles of wine that the rest of my party were drinking. I can, however, remember everything I ate, without the least bit of hangover-inducing blurriness. Restaurants of Amsterdam, beware!

It wasn’t the most auspicious of beginnings: on one of the coldest nights of the year, customers were left to wander through the bar, figure out whether they were supposed to hang up their own coats in the freezing cloakroom, find their way through the velvet curtains to the restaurant and hope someone might appear to locate their table on the other side. Luckily for us, soon after this ordeal our very own real live Italian arrived (Mediterranean-ly late, of course), and was able to spout charming-sounding utterances to the waiters, all the time gesticulating wildly. Whilst it all sounded very jovial, I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on; but somehow we managed to score some freebies so I guess the excessive hand movements worked…

We shared some antipasti to start: caprese salad (tomatoes are out of season and the mozzarella was not a patch on La Perla’s but it was edible), bruschetta (ditto on the tomatoes, and a little soggy in places), parmigiana di melanzane (hot and comforting) and calamari (tasting suspiciously pre-frozen). Next I shared a ravioli and a tuna steak with one of the group. The tuna was overcooked (sacrilege, I tell you, sacrilege!) whilst the grilled vegetables it came with were undercooked – and undercooked aubergine is not a pretty thing to eat. The ravioli were filled with spinach and ricotta, but there was something soapy and unsubtle about the filling. I liked the sage butter, but it could’ve been more sagey.

For dessert, more sharing was in order: this time of tiramisu, always a good test of an Italian restaurant. For me, the sponge didn’t have nearly enough coffee and liqueur in it. But then again maybe I was just craving liquor by this point…

Dinner came to about €40 each, though only €25 for yours truly due to my alcoholic abstinence. Maybe there are some advantages to this teetotal-ism malarkey after all…

We’ve never seen so much snow in Amsterdam. Well, someone probably has, but not those of us who’ve lived here for approximately the last half decade. And we’re extraordinarily badly adapted to it: children push toboggans along in the absence of any hills to slide down (why do they even sell toboggans in the Netherlands?); commuters in heels skid through slush on the-opposite-of-mountain bikes; and the public transport suddenly goes all British and useless.

Still, a foodie with a brunch appointment is not to be defeated by a little dusting of the cold white stuff. And so it was that yesterday morning I set out for the new Pain Quotidien (recommended by my French friend, who ought to know about these things) in de Pijp. The tram was not looking good, but then again the Phoenix – with its dodgy tyre tread and even dodgier brakes – was looking frankly dangerous. Even clad in salopettes and a ski jacket (clearly essential for fast movement in an entirely flat country) it took me 45 minutes to get there, so it needed to justify the journey.

Beginnings didn’t bode well. Our waitress didn’t appear to know what the brunch menu was, and my first cappuccino ended up in the lap of my friend opposite. The brunch menu ‘to share’ seemed not to have been designed for sharing at all: there was one of almost everything, except the bread, of which there was enough to feed an entire Alpine ski team.

Having complicatedly cut everything in half and decanted various cereals, fruits and juices into extra receptacles, however, what we ate was actually good. The bread reminded me of what bread without additives is supposed to taste like; the granola with berries and yoghurt was unfailingly natural; and the croissants were unmistakeably French. I wasn’t so keen on the cheese and ‘charcuterie’ (which was not very exciting to the point of resembling a Dutch office canteen), but the juice and coffee (second time round) were great.

Brunch costs around 25 euros for two, though hungry people who aren’t prone to sharing could probably order one for themselves. I could blame the weather for the waiting staff’s befuddled execution, but that doesn’t change the fact that the brunch format is fundamentally flawed in its claims to share-ability.

I’d go back, but I’d order for one.

Around three years ago, when I lived near the Vondelpark, I took my brother out for dinner to Pulpo. I seemed to remember it being quite good, but since it was during my pre-blogging days I didn’t review it at the time.

On Saturday night, I gatecrashed the party of some lovely New Yorkers, who live in a palatial apartment in Oud Zuid. Not realising they were going to lay on an American-sized buffet, my party-going friend and I decided to return to Pulpo for pre-party dinner since it’s just down the road.

The menu was promising: so promising, in fact, that it took us about 20 minutes of in-depth discussion to decide what to order, coming to the conclusion that we would share everything for maximum tasting potential. First up was a celeriac and truffle ravioli. Despite my extensive menu perusal, I’d failed to read the bit about the mascarpone sauce. It was too creamy, overpowering the truffle, and a butter-based sauce would’ve made much more sense. The addition of something crunchy, like toasted hazelnuts, would’ve also been a winner.

Celeriac and truffle ravioli

Grilled mackerel, tomato jam, beetroot and oyster sauce

Our second starter was grilled mackerel with tomato ‘jam’, beetroot and oyster sauce. The combination sounded odd, but I thought it could work. It sort of did, but then again it could’ve worked so much better. The grill for the mackerel hadn’t been hot enough, so the skin was flaccid instead of crispy. The tomato ‘jam’ needed further reduction and sweetness to make it less watery and more like a chutney. The beetroot needed less vinegar. And the oyster sauce was out on a bit of a limb.

Cassoulet

I’ve been thinking of making a cassoulet for Hidden Kitchen sometime, so I ordered Pulpo’s cassoulet to see if it inspired me. The duck and sausages were good, but the pulses involved regular white beans (fine) and chickpeas (not fine). Cassoulet should not taste anything like falafel. Or hummus.

Linguine with 'pulpo', scallops and asparagus

What I assume to be the house special was linguine with pulpo (octopus), scallops, asparagus and gremolata. The skill required to make a dish like this taste bland is almost admirable. The scallops had been griddled but not seasoned; the pasta was overcooked; the pulpo rubbery; and the sauce was exactly the buttery kind that should’ve been served with the ravioli, but not with a dish that was crying out for lemon juice. If I were Craig Revel Horwood and this were Strictly Come Dancing, I would proclaim it dee-you-double-elle: DULL.

Date cake with ice cream

Nut tart with butterscotch cream

Dessert was actually the best bit, which is odd coming from me, and says a lot about what came beforehand. The date cake was a little dry but the ice cream it came with was excellent; the nut tart looked like some kind of energy bar you’d take with you on a jog, but it tasted good.

Forty-five euros later, my dining companion summed it up by saying that her favourite thing had been the wine (a Sicilian Nero d’Avola, aptly named ‘Pulpito’): ‘the thing is, you chose it and I assume the chef didn’t make it’. Touché.

For almost four years now, I’ve spent most of my Friday nights in Eylders – a brown cafe just off the Leidseplein. If you have to spend any time on the Leidseplein (which, if you work there like me, is unavoidable) then Eylders is your saviour from the overpriced Irish pubs and music bars.

But since my corporate job moved offices, the tourist traps are a thing of the past. When we visited the new office, my first task was to stake out our new local. And there it was: on the corner of Vijzelgracht and Prinsengracht: Cafe Myrabelle. I started chatting to the clientele immediately, and I expect the barman will soon be hearing my life story. (Lucky him)

Unlike Eylders, however, the Myrabelle serves food: proper meals, not just bitterballen. So last Friday, after I’d conveniently spent the day at a client while my colleagues hauled boxes, we decided to eat there. Two of us had the ribs with good, salty chips and salad. The vertiginous pile of three racks defeated even me (the ability to eat vast quantities of pork ribs is one of many useless talents I possess), but they hit the spot after a day’s work.

No doubt I’ll be back there next week to set the world to rights over another Bock beer, so I’ll find out if the rest of the menu is similarly satisfying.