Please note that since writing this blog post, Akitsu has closed down
On Saturday morning, a letter dropped through my mailbox containing two newspaper clippings. This is just one of the many reasons why I love my Dad (who is, in fact, Rick Stein’s long-lost older brother). He still sends newspaper clippings. Who does that? Who doesn’t just Google the article and send a link or, failing that, scan it and email a pdf? Not only that, but the articles always arrive complete with covering letter written on headed notepaper. It’s so gorgeously old fashioned.
The articles he cuts out and sends to me usually relate to one of two themes: big, corporate, secure companies he thinks I ought to be working for, or food. And now that I’ve started working for Megacorp, articles in the first category have dropped off a bit. One of last week’s clippings was AA Gill’s weekly column in the Sunday Times, which is one of the few things I miss about Sunday mornings in England. In this issue, Gill was on his usual cynically brilliant form, but the reason I got him specially delivered through my mailbox was because he was writing about writing about food. Meta-food writing, if you will.
I quote: ‘Food is the pantheistic simile. The great metaphor. The overarching parable. It is the balm to loss, the fuel of lust. It is our lives. It is everything, from birthday cake to last supper.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself, Adrian. No really, I couldn’t.
Even for me, I ate out a lot last weekend: Friday night was Japanese at Akitsu, Saturday was Lion Noir, and Sunday brunch was at Bakkerswinkel. Do I do a Gill and pick one a week? Or do I cover all three for completeness’ sake? Or maybe compromise and go for two…
Akitsu
Gill is a personal hero of mine, and like everyone’s personal heroes, he inspires me (I want to be him) and depresses me (I know I can never be that good). Which means that I’m now a bit stuck with where to start when it comes to Akitsu. The interior is simple and understated. The service likewise. But it’s Japanese, which means that by definition it’s better than Dutch. While munching on some edamame beans and sipping Touraine, we ordered a variety of small dishes to share, and kept going back to the menu for more.
The salmon sashimi was silky fresh, the tuna irony and textured, and the scallop a mouthful of sea. Since the salmon was our favourite, we ordered a cut roll of the same, although I wasn’t convinced it was as fresh as the sashimi. My friend recommended the fried tofu in a light broth. I am no tofu fan, but this was definitely more than slimy bean curd. The gyoza were good, too (but when are dim sum ever bad?), as were the yakitori chicken skewers that came with a salty-sweet thin sauce. Dinner came to under €90 for three of us, including a decent bottle of wine, which I considered eminently reasonable.
Lion Noir
The first thing that struck me about Lion Noir was the clientèle. It’s a well known fact that if you wear a dress and heels to go to any restaurant in Amsterdam, you’ll be in the minority. Not so at Lion Noir. Everyone looked like they’d just stepped off the set of Sex and the City, which was kind of handy as we were four women and we’d all dressed to impress. With SATC in mind, we had high hopes for the cocktails that we sipped on the pavement of the Reguliersdwarsstraat. The Dutch Garden was too sweet and tasted of limeade (it was supposed to comprise jenever, elderflower and cucumber, little of which we detected) but the Cosmos were good, as was the Mount Lionjito – presumably the house cocktail. They came with the most addictive little bowl of roasted salted nuts I’ve ever eaten. But it was 8.30 already and I’d done a lot of exercise…
Leaving the bustle of gay street on one side of the restaurant, we headed through the Gothic-styled restaurant to our table in the garden on the other side. Lion Noir (which sounds like coffee liqueur to me) used to be the Tuynhuys, which had (and still has, in its new incarnation) the most beautiful, secluded, leafy, non-city garden you couldn’t imagine in Amsterdam.
Variation of lobster
The second thing that struck me was something on the menu that I read as ‘Jenny from the block’. It was, in fact, ‘jelly from the broth’, and it was part of a ‘variation’ of lobster, the other two elements of which were carpaccio and a bitterbal. Two of my friends ordered it, and reported the carpaccio and jelly to be delightful and the bitterbal a disaster. I tasted it, and it reminded me of arancini and deep-fat fryers.
Swordfish starter
I had swordfish with a red pepper salsa, quinoa and something pale and creamy that I couldn’t quite identify. All the elements were good in themselves, but sat rather separately on the plate – both physically and flavourally.
My main, on the other hand, was a porky triumph. Fillets and chops of suckling pig were served with fresh peas, gnocchi and a mildly apricot-laced jus. You know I am weak-kneed when it comes to pork, but this was truly exemplary. I was stuffed afterwards, but I would happily have had seconds.
One course extra free! (Not pork, which I forgot to photograph)
Dinner came to around €75 each, which sounds like a lot (well, it is a lot) but it included our two pre-dinner cocktails, plus a couple of bottles of mid-range wine. I was nicely tipsy afterwards, and handed over my plastic with gay abandon.
I think many people would be shocked by the amount of money I spend on food, and I’ve never actually calculated it as a percentage of my monthly expenditure through fear of my own reaction. But, for me, it’s a price worth paying. For those of us for whom food is a religion – something to devote not only our salaries but our souls to – ‘God is hidden in the list of ingredients’. I think you know who I’m quoting by now…
