Food Film Festival 2014 – a preview and a blogging first!
A few days ago, I was extremely honored to be invited to the press lunch of Amsterdam’s Food Film Festival 2014. Since I know nothing about films, I’ll leave that part to the experts. For a preview of the food that awaits you, read on…
This year, the FFF is at the Westergasfabriek in Westerpark, which is extremely handy for me given that I’m a Spaarndammerbuurt-er. It also focuses not just on the foodie stuff, but also on the sustainability aspects of food production and consumption: animal welfare, GMO, land use, sustainable fishing, and all that jazz… Which is quite interesting to me too, seeing as I’ve been writing sustainability reports in my day job for the past eight years.
It makes sense, then, that the evening menu for this year’s festival is vegetarian. Or, at least, it’s principally vegetarian – for those who can’t (or would prefer not to) do without, there are meat and fish additions to some of the dishes that you can opt into if you like. The meal was designed by Bridges’ chef Joris Bijdendijk and (somewhat contradictorily) sausage expert Samuel Levie of Brandt & Levie fame, and is an accomplished exercise in seasonality and local Dutch produce.
The amuse was a bite of radish filled with brown butter and a pretzel-shaped puff-pastry morsel topped with paprika. It was swiftly followed up by two spears of seasonal white asparagus (the opportunity was clearly too good to miss!) with a smooth, rich, almond-y purée. I particularly liked the wine pairing with this one – an Austrian Weissburgunder.
In fact, it’s worth mentioning the wines in general at this point: the festival’s pop-up restaurant aims to showcase wines that are lesser known in the Netherlands, which means you can expect an elegant yet eclectic set of pairings from Hungary and Austria, including a fabulous ice wine.
The main course I kind of – umm – missed. There was some instruction about sharing the starter and main with the person next to you that I clearly entirely zoned out of (it was in Dutch and I was desperately Instagramming, ok?) so I never got to try the leek terrine with lentils and a Dutch answer to Welsh Rarebit. But it did look very nice, as you can see by the pic:
The cheese course was an interesting arrangement of grated goat’s cheese with rhubarb – sounds odd but you have to try it to see what I mean. Dessert was possibly my favourite course (which is odd, for me): a sort of île flottante atop rice pudding and a fruit and yuzu-injected middle layer. Again, hard to describe but definitely worth tasting.
Vital statistics of FFF’s pop-up restaurant
When: Friday 9 May – Sunday 11 May, from 5 – 11 pm
