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Pre-drinking dinner at Divan

Please note that since writing this blog post, Divan has closed down

While I’ve habitually always based my choice of after-dinner drinking establishment on which bar is closest to the restaurant I want to review, of late it’s come to be the other way round. Ever since I’ve been writing for the World’s Best Bars website, it’s been a punishing drinking schedule of trying out the newest and / or best recommended bars in Amsterdam. Yes, it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Hence, in a bid to line my stomach before hitting Bar Oldenhof, I went to Turkish restaurant Divan on the same street. It looks kind of like a brown cafe, but with smilier staff. While waiting for another friend, we ordered a bottle of Turkish red and some bread with humous and yoghurt dips. That was lucky because neither our friend nor the service seemed to be running particularly on time that evening, and it was only after nearly an hour of sitting down that we finally ordered.

Feeling sociable and a little drunk by this point, we ordered a fairly absurd number of mezze dishes to share. I was a big fan of the vine leaves stuffed with rice, raisins and pine nuts, and the baked aubergine dish was a hit, along with the spicy chicken. Less good in my opinion were the feta cigars (too greasy and too much pastry) and the meatballs that tasted slightly like cheap hamburgers. The dips with the bread were uniformly delicious and did a sterling job at soaking up the alcohol.

We didn’t end up leaving, however, till nearly midnight – which is fairly surprising since dinner only cost us a little over €30 each so we really can’t have eaten that much… Our late exit did, however, mean that my write-up of Bar Oldenhof is going to have to wait till another day. Any more restaurants on the Elandsgracht you want me to review while I’m at it?

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Divan (Middle Eastern)
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