So what, we wondered, is it with this venue and ill-conceived concepts? Everything on a Stick serves (as you might expect) all its food on a stick. Except the fried rice, which doesn’t come on a stick obviously, because that would just be stupid. But then again, why serve it at all?

Anyway, it’s also an all-you-can-eat restaurant, although there are various conditions attached to this claim: you only have two hours in which to stuff your face; you can only order in rounds of three dishes at the time; and one of those dishes has to be a ‘side dish’, meaning carbs or veggies, presumably to keep the costs down.

In no particular order, we ate chicken, beef, lamb and duck kebabs, scallops wrapped in bacon, marinated salmon and tuna, garlic prawns, grilled stuffed squid, griddled courgettes, roasted sweet potatoes, and corn on the cob. True to its word, everything did indeed come on a stick (except the aforementioned fried rice) and if that were all that’s required of a plate of food, we’d have been happy. But cooking things on sticks requires more than just, well, a lot of stick. It requires seasoning (there wasn’t much going on), time for meat to marinade (most of it seemed to have been dunked in sauce, post-heat element), and a reasonable attention to cooking times. The meat and fish were uniformly overcooked, while the sweet potatoes were almost crunchy. It doesn’t take a Masterchef finalist to figure out that just because something is cut into small pieces and put on a stick, doesn’t mean it takes the same amount of time to cook.

While we were mid-meal, a photographer from Het Parool came in to take photos for next week’s review that Johannes van Dam is writing. I’m curious to hear what he thought of it, but at €26 a pop, I’d rather do dinner at home and get my sticks elsewhere…

For people who like their drinks metric, here are the quantities I used:

• 60 ml gin
• 60 ml grapefruit juice
• 15 ml St Germain
• Quarter of a lime, squeezed
• Shake with ice, strain into a martini glass and serve with a sage leaf.

Still experiencing grapefruit cravings, I went on to make an Ottolenghi recipe of chicken thighs marinated in harissa and yoghurt, with a grapefruit and rocket salad, and a warm reduction of grapefruit juice, lemon juice, what should have been maple syrup but was actually treacle, star anise and cinnamon.

In one afternoon, I worked my way through four grapefruits, two lemons and a lime. I officially can’t catch a cold for a year.

Worst Wijncafe does what is says (in Dutch) on the tin: it’s a casual hangout where you can drink fabulous wines by the glass (or the half glass – why bother?) or of course by the bottle. But when there’s this much grapey goodness on offer, you don’t want to stick to one.

The menu features a dozen or so dishes, all of which are small and meant for sharing – a bit like tapas. And just to save you the embarrassment of realising you’re not actually a wine connoisseur, the menu tells you which wines to drink with each dish.

We started with a fresh, warm sausage sitting in a bowl of lentils, with a glass of something white and clean-tasting. Pork and wine are two of my all-time favourite things in the world. If I’d been struck by a bolt of lightning at that very moment, I’d have died a happy woman.

Next, we had a semi-soft goat’s cheese (it turned out that, in addition to pork, there were other cheese and charcuterie options) with a lightly pickled fennel salad. A man with a fabulous leather apron suggested a full-bodied, deep-coloured Italian white to go with the cheese, which more or less sang an opera on my tongue.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, the rillettes appeared – soft, melting with pork fat, and coupled with a caramelised red endive and sultana affair. The wine that came with it was a classic Italian red that I could have bathed in all night.

But of course I didn’t, because our final dish was a plate of air-dried ham with pears, walnuts and a glass of red that made my drinking buddy go “Oooh, it’s all musky and sexy like pheromones!” which I think probably says all you need to know.

As for me, I could write sausage innuendo all evening. But instead I’m just telling you to go and eat it.

Of course, what started out as €35 ended up costing €65, what with wine and water and a tip… But then I should know this about myself by now: promotions are just there to tempt me to spend more money on the accessories that come with them.

We started with a glass of Prosecco, which tasted a bit cheap if I’m honest. The first course of oysters with spring onions, coriander, chilli and soy sauce was a little on the small side (given that you couldn’t eat the mountain of seaweed that they came on) – but then again it’s worth pacing yourself when you know you have six more to come.

The second dish was possibly my favourite: two perfectly cooked scallops with a buttery sabayon and wilted spinach. Simple and delicious.

Next up came blinis with smoked salmon, crème fraîche and herring caviar – not the most creative combination, but nothing wrong with the constituent parts. I just could have been at a 90s dinner party.

Then there was a sort of crab duo: one cold, with mayo and apple – it reminded me of coronation chicken but then with crab instead of chicken, and no curry powder. Ok, so maybe it was nothing like coronation chicken. The other crab was of the soft-shelled variety and had been deep-fried and served with grapefruit marmalade. I liked it, but it didn’t go with the Riesling we were drinking.

At what felt like possibly the wrong point in the meal, out came a fish soup – but it was the kind of rich, highly thickened soup that you’d eat a bowl of on a cold day, not the kind of light, palate-cleansing broth you’d want to punctuate your seven-course fish extravaganza. I wasn’t crazy about it.

Our last savoury dish was cod with mash and shrimps. The fish was good, but swimming in butter – again, not something I was really big on at course six. Dessert was a classic chocolate fondant, which was fine. But only fine.

My biggest disappointment was the wine. The ‘arrangement’ consisted of four glasses and cost €22 (or €7 per individual glass) but to me it tasted uniformly cheap and identical. I wasn’t quite sure how it was possible for a Riesling and an Albariño and a Chablis to all tasted basically the same, but somehow they did. To me, at any rate.

It wasn’t that there was anything particularly bad about Stork. It was just that – with a couple of notable exceptions – it was all a bit, well, meh. The question is whether it would be better or worse when what you’re eating isn’t on promotion… and there’s only one way to find out.

And the thing about Amsterdam is that most trends seem to happen a year of two later than they do in London or Berlin or Chicago, which means that all you have to do is jump on an international bandwagon and ta-daa! You’re at the forefront of Amsterdam grooviness.

In the last 48 hours, I’ve been out for a spectacular brunch, I’ve eaten pop-up Korean food in a freezing cold, not-quite-converted-enough warehouse, and I’ve bought bread in a flower pot from a food truck in a park. My hip bones are aching so much right now I might need a cup of tea and the Eastenders omnibus just to give them a rest.

Let’s start with the brunch, as it’s the only bit of gastro-cool on the list that has a fixed address and phone number that I can usefully put in my (clearly antiquated) database. Little Collins is run by two Australians who clearly know how to cook. Always a good start. It’s on a quiet street in de Pijp, which is a shame because it’s miles from my house but probably close to where all you hipsters are living. But I should quit with my cool-bashing, because there’s nothing remotely try-hard or pretentious about Little Collins. The venue is simple but cosy, the coffee hot and strong, the juices freshly squeezed, and the service friendly but not invasive. What’s not to like?

The menu features brunch classics (full-on fry-ups, kedgeree, granola, that sort of thing) alongside various less obvious choices. I had corn and coriander fritters with bacon, guacamole, salsa and sour cream. It looked enormous, but I couldn’t stop until I’d polished off the whole plate. I then ordered a second small-but-perfectly-formed cappuccino to wash it down. I’m not sure I can wait till next weekend to go back.

Rather more difficult to blog about are the pop-ups. Not least because by the time you read this, most of them won’t exist – or not in the form or context in which I’m writing about them. Pop-ups have existed in Amsterdam for a little longer than it might seem: I started my own underground dining concept by the name of Hidden Kitchen back in 2009. Meanwhile, Jason Hartley’s lovefood has found homes in Cafe Finch, Cafe Bax, Brasserie Vlaming and elsewhere over the three years he’s been in business, and he’s currently in the process of launching a permanent fixture in the Koggestraat (scheduled to open in June). Back in the day, the Dikke Lepel ladies were (and possibly still are) running WinkWink dinners – so called because they were ‘culinary one-night stands’ – from an Oud-West apartment. While, more recently, Claire Sullivan of My Table fame has been the talk of the town (and a highlight of this blog) at the People’s Place. With the end of her current series just last week, however, the next pop-up will no doubt be somewhere entirely different.

Another name to watch is Madame Charlotte, who throws down a couple of trestle tables in her catering studio once a month and serves up a four-course fixed menu to her group of a dozen or so lucky guests for just €35. The evening I booked in, we were treated to fish cakes, spiced aubergine soup, lamb chops, rhubarb hangop, and more interesting foodie conversations than I could shake a foraging stick at.

My latest exciting pop-up experience took place at Roest on Friday night. Domingo (of Korean Taco Party fame) and friends served up a surprise Korean tasting menu plus a welcome drink for just €25. The venue, which is not far from the Piet Heintunnel and satisfyingly difficult to find (obviously you want to feel like only a handful of people are in the know when you’re cool enough to go pop-up hunting) would be great in summer but was bitterly cold in Amsterdam’s mythical ‘spring’ weather. Fortunately, the food was worth the four hours I spent shivering in my coat. I lost track of courses, and I don’t think that’s really the point of Korean food anyway. We ate DIY lettuce rolls filled with oysters, pork, tofu and various sauces. We ate soups full of seafood, mushrooms and noodles. We ate kimchi till our lips burnt, sweet potato, barbecued beef, cuttlefish, aubergine… the list went on. The event itself was called Yokiyo; don’t ask me what it means or where it might pop up next, but look out for it and make a booking. Trust me on this one.

Today, I beelined first to cool-kid-on-the-block Two for Joy for their own-roasted coffee, before heading over to the Westergasfabriek for the monthly NeighbourFood Market. There, I stopped by the fabulous Bao Project for an Asian pork slider; a food truck in the shape of a red van selling filled, warm bread in mini, terracotta flower pots (as you do); and the aforementioned My Table‘s stall for a bowl of steaming laksa. I am sated. For now, at least.

There will always be a time and a place for established restaurants with a fixed address, where you can choose from a menu, order from a wine list, and talk only to your dinner date on a cosy table for two. But for those other times and other places, Amsterdam’s food scene is feeling mightily hip right now. Trending times indeed…

So here is last week’s Italian dinner at A Tavola (excluding the main course, which was veal with a thickened lemon sauce, which I entirely forgot to photograph). Enjoy the food porn!

Caprese salad and marinated octopus

Roasted peppers

Bresaola

Grilled courgette with garlic

Dessert trio

Still, not being one to let a holiday pass without some sort of celebration, I went out for dinner and drinks with one of my best friends to mark the start of the long Easter weekend. (I’m sure that’s what Jesus would do.) I’d read about The Colour Kitchen in Time Out last month, and booked it in a hurry the day before without first checking the address. Imagine the shock of my Amsterdammer’s mentality when I looked it up on the map to discover it was – unbelievably – outside the A10! Good lord – who knew there were restaurants out there?

We both set off well in advance, thinking it was going to take us about an hour to find the other end of the Jan Evertsenstraat, only to arrive 20 minutes later and (for possibly the first time ever) early for our reservation. Luckily the restaurant wasn’t busy (probably because every other Amsterdammer has a deep distrust of life outside the A10 as well) and our table was ready and waiting for us. Our nearest neighbours were a few tables away so, despite the cavernous warehouse-sized space and lack of soft furnishings, noise was minimal and we didn’t feel overheard. I’m sure there must be some kind of clever acoustic design going on, but it wasn’t apparent to me how they managed to make such a large space feel so gezellig.

We started with a glass of prosecco to celebrate the weekend, and – in a similar vein – decided to order the three-course ‘teaser’ menu so that we could try a bit of everything. I should backtrack a little here and explain the concept: according to the blurb in the front of the menu, The Colour Kitchen employs professionals and trainees from a variety of different countries and cultures. It’s funded by Stichting The Colour Kitchen (a kind of diversity-promoting social project, from what I could make out), and gives education and employment opportunities to immigrants, while the restaurant’s customers get the chance to taste dishes from its chefs’ native countries. Sounded like a win-win situation to me.

There was a lot of food. The starters comprised four dishes to share, the first of which was a surinamese soup called ‘saoto’ – a refreshing broth containing noodles, beansprouts, eggs and herbs. We also had a salmon and swordfish carpaccio, falafel balls with red cabbage and sherry, and homemade veal pastrami filled with a bulgar wheat and pomegranate salad. We wolfed the lot.

When the four main courses arrived, we weren’t sure how we were going to finish all the food – but we remained undefeated. We ate dorade with lightly curried risotto, which was a little heavy for me, and another white fish with roasted vegetables. The vegetable curry was light and coconut-y, in contrast with a seared ribeye steak with a rich dark sauce and cassava chips. The food wasn’t faultless (the chips were on the dry side, and the outside of the meat over-charred) but it nevertheless left a good impression.

Dessert comprised a slice of chocolate tart that tasted slightly minty, a scoop of tangy lemon sorbet, a glass of fruit compote (I tasted apples and pears) with a biscuit crumb, and some kind of cheesecake that was too gelatinous for me. Still, three out of four isn’t bad.

We were the last people in the restaurant, having lingered over a bottle of the house red wine for a good hour after the end of the meal. The service was perfect: there when you needed it and not when you didn’t. Prices were reasonable at €40 for the three-course teaser menu (we could easily have spent less had we opted for the simpler daily menu or gone a la carte) plus around €20 for the wine.

The Colour Kitchen cooked up probably one of the best meals I’ve had in Amsterdam so far this year. And, if I can be persuaded to venture out of the comfort zone that is the A10 again, I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last supper I have there.

The restaurant I went to last Tuesday evening could not have been anywhere else in the world. Small, cosy and gezellig, overlooking a canal which is in turn overlooked by dozens of un-curtained windows, my bike parked expectantly outside. Proeverij 274 takes its number from its Prinsengracht location, and is Dutchness incarnate. The amuse was a bitterbal filled with (somewhat dry) smoked mackerel, while the starter involved a brioche ‘wentelteefje’, which I have no idea how to translate. Slightly sweet and reminiscent of bread and butter pudding, it was the supporting actress to the star of the show: smoked scallops. In themselves both tasted good, but the addition of ‘almond risotto’ (a too-sweet, soggy cake of crushed almonds that didn’t contain any rice) and penny-sized blobs of pesto sauce didn’t do the dish any favours.

The main course on the chef’s menu featured a lot of ingredients that I love – pork, parsnip, lemon, aubergine, broccoli – but failed to deliver as a combination of flavours. The shoulder of pork was succulent, with a comforting layer of piggy fat, but nothing it was served with quite made sense. While the lemon should have cut through the richness, it had been mixed with parsnip purée to form the kind of doughy, mousse-y mixture you’d expect to top a cheesecake. The appelstroop crisp was equally sweet and not at all crispy. And the aniseed and coffee sauce also fell into the trap of being too rich and too sweet. I had no problem with the roasted aubergine or the steamed broccoli, but that’s probably because they didn’t feature any added sugar. The whole dish lacked something acidic to elevate the flavours.

Dessert was the kind of heavy, traditional pudding you can imagine someone’s grandmother making in 1952. The cake element had a toffee taste, and hid a layer of jammy plums underneath. The sauce it came with looked like butterscotch but turned out to be a slightly sour, thinner alternative. I couldn’t make up my mind about either.

Elements of the food were very good quality, but the whole was significantly less than the sum of the parts. The service was impeccable (assuming you’re in the mood to linger over dinner), and the wine pairings well considered and from very good bottles. Dinner came to around €60 including a tip.

It may not have been the best meal I’ve had in Amsterdam, but the location, the atmosphere and the company of a good friend all came together to represent one thing: home.

This next bit is seemingly unrelated, but bear with me: a couple of weeks ago, I attended my first crawfish boil. My friend (who had – amazingly – organised the whole thing in my honour) presented me with my very own jar of Creole spice mix afterwards so that I could recreate some of the magic in my own kitchen. So there I was thinking about spring onions and Creole spices, and this was the rather hybrid result…

First, I marinated some chicken breasts in the spices, together with a spoonful of honey and a dash of soy sauce, which I later threw on the griddle and then in the oven to finish off.

Then, weirdly, I made Caribbean rice and peas, which were cooked with spring onions, coconut milk, kidney beans and thyme.

For one version of my Caribbean-Creole fusion, I made a salsa with (you’ve guessed it) spring onions, red pepper, pineapple, chilli, ginger, mint, coriander, lime juice and sugar.

And for the other, I griddled a few whole spring onions till they were soft and lightly charred to top the chicken.

Not bad for a jetlagged Wednesday night.

But let’s see this as two different things: Vicky Hampton’s Working Lunch is for when you have half an hour, tops, and you’ll probably spend most of it eating behind your desk anyway. This post is for when the pressure’s off, the deadlines are over, you have a client in town, or you just feel like wagging work and sitting in the sun for a couple of hours. You’ll never make it in and out in half an hour, but then again that’s not the point. These restaurants are for sunny Fridays when you have the time and inclination to indulge…

Dauphine

Near Amstel station in a vast space neighbouring the buildings of Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad, Dauphine is one of those places that everyone seems to know and love. The service is fast and efficient, the food consistently of a high standard, and suits and civvies alike seem to come back again and again. Try the kroketten, ravioli, Caesar salad or Holtkamp cakes for dessert.

Vapiano

In an equally large and impressive location overlooking the water next to Amsterdam’s main public library, Vapiano serves up Italian fast food: fresh pizzas, salads, pasta and more. It has a great terrace in summer, and you can feel all bookish and intelligent wandering about the library afterwards…

Pakhuis de Zwijger

Pakhuis is a cosy spot for an after-work coffee or glass of wine, but it also does a good line in panini, salads and other broodjes. The terrace isn’t exactly picturesque (right on the Piet Heinkade), but it does attract the lunchtime sun and the tables are big enough for groups of colleagues or to share with other customers. Inside, the lighting is softer and the atmosphere relaxed.

Magazzino

By day the Ymere canteen, by night an Italian restaurant, Magazzino is open all day to the public. It never quite escapes the canteen ambience, however, and the village-hall chairs and tables don’t help the impression. The food is decent, if not spectacular, and evening fare takes the form of large sharing platters rather than individual dishes. It’s a handy venue for large groups.