Please note that since writing this blog post, &samhoud places has closed down
The problem with deciding to sink upwards of €200 into dinner is that, having made that decision, it’s tough to find someone else who’s willing to sink upwards of €200 into dinner with you. (Before you get out your tiny violins to play the soundtrack to my first-world problems, consider that many people are prepared to spend double that amount on a pair of shoes. It’s all about priorities, peeps…) Happily for me, I know three discerning ladies – one Singaporean chef, one French marketeer and one Australian designer – who have the same first-world problem as me. And so it was that we formed the Foodie Girls Dining Club…
Our first high-rolling dinner was at &samhoud places, which I’m going to call Samhoud from now on because symbols in proper nouns belong firmly to 90s musicians, and besides, I harbour a hatred of ampersands. We started with a cocktail in the lounge downstairs, which took a long time to arrive and was marginally too sweet (for a Hemingway Daiquiri), too oily (for a Martini) and too weak (for a Cosmopolitan).
Dinner itself was upstairs, with a view over the Oosterdok from a warm, comfy, upholstered dining chair. We decided to go for the six-course tasting menu (plus four or so amuses) with wine pairings. As my dad always said: if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. Even if doing the job is going to cost you €250. Actually, I doubt he ever mentioned that last bit.
Samhoud’s menu started as it meant to go on: molecular and rather sweet. The first amuse was more like dessert: something that looked like a sponge finger sandwich turned out to be a far more ephemeral concoction of strawberries and foie gras gripped between two mini baguettes of meltingness, all accompanied by a yuzu foam-mousse affair. “Baguettes of meltingness” might not be the most elegant term I could have come up with, but it was pretty much impossible to figure out what they tasted like, since they had a habit of disappearing as soon as you got them anywhere near saliva.
Next came a slow-poached egg yolk in a bird’s nest (shredded wheat?!) with a sauce the texture of Hollandaise and various bits of shrubbery. Rich and refined. It was followed up by something that I’ll call The Valentine’s Dish: white chocolate hearts filled with caviar (which was odd, frankly), scarlet throbbing hearts of beetroot, and – uhmm – a bit of herring. I wasn’t convinced. The cone of beetroot-filled paper, and the wasabi-flavoured foam, on the other hand, were a little easier on the palate.
At this point, I was quite glad the amuses had come to an end, as the “real” courses were more my style. The first was a delicate little dish of white asparagus, raspberries, tomato, some other kind of foam, and a creamy champagne sauce. Simple summer pleasures.
The next course verged back into the territory of the surreal: apparently inspired by the art of Yayoi Kusama, we got a circular postcard to read while we enjoyed our langoustine with caviar, tomato and other things in round shapes (“polkadots”, it seemed, were the theme).
One of my favourite dishes was up next: red mullet with puréed potato and olives, another berry-flavoured blob (these made several appearances) and oil of verbena. We were advised to layer up a small quantity of every element on the same forkful, and the combination was indeed sublime. As was the wine pairing.
Still going strong at the halfway point (although I can imagine my readers are flagging by now), I wolfed down the lobster dish that followed. Once I’d removed the shavings of parmesan that overpowered the whole dish, the remaining pea lasagne (don’t ask me how that was possible) and crustacean-rich broth laced with kaffir lime was fragrant and accomplished.
Our last savoury dish (although every one of them had an element of sweetness) was pigeon with 50 ingredients. I couldn’t even begin to identify them, but the general theme seemed to be Moroccan and (as we were promised) every bite was different. Unfortunately for me, I ended up on a bite I didn’t particularly like. Cue more wine.
Dessert was supposed to involve chocolate and porcinis, but as mushrooms are the spawn of the devil, I was brought a take on a piña colada instead. It was (unsurprisingly by this point) largely made of foam, which looked like an île flottante riding atop a sea of candied pineapple. It packed an alcoholic punch, which – against all intuition – went amazingly well with the sweet wine served with the dish.
In fact, the wine pairings in general were absolutely spot on. Not that you wouldn’t expect that for €80, but it’s still worth mentioning as the wine was one of the elements I enjoyed the most about the dinner. The service – despite the €290 price tag (including tip) I paid for the whole shebang – still managed to be all a bit patchy and Dutch and casual. Water splashed on tables, gaps between courses were erratic (our second amuse was brought before we’d finished our first), and nothing will ever convince me that gold high-top trainers are appropriate in a Michelin two-star restaurant.
On the plus side, the chef (not Moshik Roth, who we didn’t meet, but his second in command) was very happy to come over and explain more about some of the dishes to us. Ok, it might have helped that he was mischievously cute (AND he winked at me – which probably hasn’t happened since I hit my thirties) but we did have some extremely important questions we had to ask him… let’s just say, Foodie Girls Dining Club has its advantages.
So what was the verdict? We had fun, which was the main thing. But we also shelled out a lot of money for a meal which – we all agreed – we probably wouldn’t recommend to others. So there you have it: next time you feel like blowing €300, there are stars other than Samhoud’s to spend them on. Or just go buy some shoes or something…
