Please note that since writing this blog post, District V has closed down
Please note that since writing this blog post, Ondeugd has closed down
Please note that since writing this blog post, Simpel has closed down
Anyone who’s ever been a bridesmaid will agree that, no matter how long you’ve known the bride-to-be or how much she claims to trust you, the prospect of organising the hen-do is one pondered with a certain amount of trepidation. Whatever, then, possessed me to invite eight girls to my 55 square metre flat in Amsterdam for the weekend? What’s worse is that my home city is known for a certain type of stag and hen party from the UK, and I’ve cringed with embarrassment every time I’ve watched one of my compatriots teetering drunkenly down the cobbled streets in a pink tiara or a T-shirt advertising such witticisms as ‘Pete-the-donkey-McGuire’. I don’t even agree with the institution of marriage for chrissake.
And so, I did what I always do whenever confronted with an event I don’t quite know how to handle: I focussed on the food. What to cook for people? where to go for lunch, for dinner? The latter of these troubling issues has, however, been cause for much ‘market research’ over the past couple of months, and I can’t pretend that it was too much of a hardship.
First, I tried District V; recommended to me by a colleague, the restaurant sits on a little-frequented square in the south of the Pijp. Though the interior may be somewhat basic, if it’s a warm evening the terrace is the place to be. Tables and chairs sprawl across the leafy square, and the uncomplicated menu is presented on a portable blackboard. I had a delicious plate of charcuterie to start, followed by a white fish with wild rice. This was some time ago now and I can’t remember the fish very clearly; what I do remember, however, was that it came with artichoke that hadn’t been properly bearded (or is that what you do to mussels?) nor had it had enough of its outer leaves removed. As a result, I was left with a stringy chewy ball, facing the option to spit or swallow. Apologies, reader, we’re eating.
Second, I tried de Ondeugd, which looked rather terrifyingly trendy on the website. In the flesh, however, it looked slightly more like the kind of club you wouldn’t want to see in daylight. My carpaccio didn’t live up to benchmark standards (that’ll be the subject of another blog entry, I think), and my main turned out to be a kind of savoury scone filled with roasted vegetables and smothered in tomato sauce. I can’t remember what it described itself as, but it wouldn’t be winning any awards from the people at the Trade Descriptions Act. In any case, it didn’t do it for me.
Last weekend, I staked out another restaurant in the same area. Simpel is both aptly named and an absolute misnomer. White-washed wooden trellis tables contrast with a vast spray of white blossom on what can only be described as the majority of a tree hanging from one wall. The menu must have been good because I can remember deliberating over several dishes, wishing I had three stomachs. I eventually plumped for a herb salad with mozzarella and char-grilled aubergine and courgette. The mozzarella was creamy and animalistic, the vegetables nutty with the caramised sugars brought out by their char-grilling. The dressing was naturally sweetened by an aged balsamic. Starters are often my favourite part of the meal – I’m at my hungriest and they have the fewest rules to follow – and this one made me very happy indeed. My dining companions had a red pepper soup, which was rather too creamy for their taste. As a main course, I had hot red mullet on a cold potato salad with what was described as an almond beurre blanc. I wasn’t sure that the hot-cold thing quite worked outside of the kitchen of a molecular chef-scientist, and the beurre blanc didn’t sport that characteristic tanginess beneath the smooth buttery exterior, but the experience was nevertheless not unpleasant. The girls had swordfish; or should I say, they had pasta and tomato sauce with an enormous slice of swordfish balanced unceremoniously on the top. Now, there’s nothing wrong with pasta and sauce, and I had the impression that this was decent linguine, but even I couldn’t scrape their plates for them – it’s simply too much to serve on one dish. For dessert, we shared two chocolate mousses between us. They were served in glasses, with the dark chocolate on the bottom and the white topping them like a head of cream on a hot chocolate. I know many a lady who could’ve been blackmailed by that dessert.
At the end of all this research, I’m not entirely the wiser as to where I should actually take my fellow hens for dinner. What I do know, however, is that we won’t be wearing L-plates in an Irish pub in the red light district.
