Ever cooked for a nine year-old? Ask them what they want for dinner and all but the most die-hard foodified child has one standard response: pasta. Well, that’s on the basis that they know ‘chocolate’ is going to get them nowhere. My niece, Hampton though she may be, is no exception.
And thus it was that when she came to stay, I was tasked with finding a child-friendly Italian restaurant that would also tick my Amsterdam foodie boxes. I guess I could’ve just made her spaghetti bolognaise and had done with it, but where would be the fun in that?
I have a mysterious comment-writer to thank for our eventual restaurant choice (thanks Gavin, whoever you are!). Assaggi is buried down one of the eerste-tweede-dwars-type street-ettes that criss-cross the Jordaan. Its interior is elegant and remarkably spacious considering the other buildings in this historical area. The picture of a giant forkful of pasta spanning one wall didn’t quite do it for me, but it seemed to reassure my niece.
To start, we shared mixed antipasti and an aubergine parmigiana. For a small girl, she made short work of the caprese salad and bresaola with taleggio. When I asked her what she thought of them, she pointed out that I should’ve told her she needed to remember before she ate them. Well, fair enough. Meanwhile, my brother and I fought over the excellent vitello tonnato, grilled peppers and courgettes, and aubergine roulade.
Next came the meal’s raison d’etre: the pasta. My niece chose tagliatelle with prosciutto, fresh tomatoes and lemon. This time, I took no chances. I ploughed straight in with my own fork, pleased with the fresh, zingy flavours that met my mouth. While I wasn’t busy eating other people’s food, I was enjoying my own pasta: meat and ricotta-stuffed ravioli with the requisite sage butter. It didn’t look particularly plentiful, but it was deceptively filling and deeply satisfying.
My brother opted for one of the specials: osso bucco with highly saffron-ed rice and a suitably artery-clogging helping of bone marrow. Rich and decadent.
The service being a little slow, by 9.30 my young dining companion’s eyes were almost closing at the table, so we didn’t make it to dessert. Not that any of us would’ve had room for it. The meal wasn’t cheap (especially when one’s fellow diners consisted of a minor and a brother whose bank card had conveniently stopped working) but it was worth every cent. Not least, to feel smugly satisfied that I was playing some small part in the restaurant education of tomorrow’s fine diners…
