Three courses, two sisters and one homemade tapenade
Please note that since writing this blog post, Zus en Zus has closed down
Having spent an hour and a half being entertained at De Chameleon theatre, an establishment reminiscent of an English village hall with an audience of around 30 studiedly impoverished thespians on punishing wooden seats (I must say, in its defence, that the acting was far less primitive), we wandered onto the Overtoom – the less salubrious end, by the Surinameplein – in the tentative hope that we might find somewhere to eat
I had a friend from Germany to stay. Typically, we had spent the day prowling the Westermarkt replete with cameras, foolishly straying into bike lanes, all the while feeling faintly embarrassed. In line with the picture I’m painting, we found ourselves at lunchtime in a certain pannenkoek establishment whose identity I will protect – just this once. Suffice to say, though the pancakes were stodgy and sleep-inducing enough, so was the service: an hour’s wait for our meal, and no willingness on any part to acknowledge that in a family restaurant it may be well-advised to inform guests of the wait they have to look forward to.
Consequent to this earlier culinary experience, I was grumpy and already ill-disposed towards wherever we ended up for our post-theatre dinner. Zus, therefore, had a long way to go to impress me. She succeeded.
Like many Brits, I have an irrational aversion to paying for water. Never having seen the point of mineral water, when I say water, I mean tap water. At Zus, I didn’t have to say anything at all. Two glasses and a jug of iced water were set down on the table, together with a small bowl of fat green olives and a basket of bread with what was clearly a home-recipe tapenade. All this within two minutes of our arrival. And no, there were no nasty surprises on our bill at the end of the meal either.
The menu was like playing noughts and crosses. A blackboard with three columns, voor, hoofd and nagerechten, with three dishes in each column. To score a row made you a clear winner, setting you back only €19.95 for the three courses. Our wine was of similarly good value for a bottle of Chilean Merlot, and we were even spared the indignity of drinking it out of the children’s-beaker-glasses that are recently so popular in Amsterdam. I chose a salad of chicory, pear, blue cheese and walnuts to start, while my fellow theatre-goer had Cacciucco alla Livornese, an Italian fish soup that was light, fresh and, most importantly, full of fish. My main course of zeebaars was equally well prepared; curiously, though, his beef was cooked medium-rare without his being asked. Are the chefs just psychic or was this an oversight? Our hoofdgerechten came with salad and a dish of fresh, buttered vegetables; I believe this is generally considered rather old fashioned these days, and often requires the kitchen to walk a tightrope between over and undercooking their greens. However, awell cooked dish of vegetables is a beautiful thing, and moreover contributes to the ‘five-a-day’ that we’re all now government-required to count with religious rigour. Though Zus would do well to exchange their grey talcum powder for pepper mills, I admit there was no need to touch the seasoning of the vegetables. After filling up on the numerous ‘extras’, dessert was at once entirely unnecessary and exuding the same irresistible style of simplicity coupled with sophistication that drew us into the restaurant in the first place.
Zus’s attitude may have something to do with the fact that its location requires loyalty rather than tourists, or simply that its people are committed to the food and service they offer. Either way, these sisters have you believe you’re part of the family.
