Ibiza: a waste of good ingredients

Please note that since writing this blog post, Ibiza has closed down

I’m having the same problem as last Monday: I’ve just been reviewing a new restaurant called Ibiza for Time Out, and now I can’t think what to say. Or rather, I can but I’ve already said it. For my own sanity I don’t want to repeat myself, but – more importantly – I expect I’m not allowed to from a copyright perspective.

Suffice to say, the décor is every bit as terrible as I was warned it would be: I know the Reguliersdwarsstraat is fondly named Gay Street by those of us that live here, but pink lighting?! One can only hope the designers were being ironic…

The menu looked pretty good actually – some exciting produce, including Wagyu beef, which I’d not seen here in the Netherlands before. It was more than just a shame, then, when the chefs clearly didn’t know what to do with it. But more of that after the starter…

My Five Tuna Salad came thrown on a plate like a teenager’s bedroom – over-sized lettuce leaves all over the place and a lack of dressing. The tuna itself was a game of two halves: the seared version and the two types of marinated tuna were a success – in that if the fish itself is of a high quality, then you can’t go too far wrong. The smoked and salted versions, however, were like eating putrefied shark: the former like Mojama gone wrong, the latter so salty it made my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth.

Next for the Wagyu beef. Luckily they hadn’t decided to try pickling it or otherwise destroying it, and they did at least cook it with sensible seasoning and according to specification (rare, obviously). But rather than being served with any kind of jus or sauce, it was instead accompanied by more un-dressed iceberg lettuce, chips and vegetables mixed with (wait for it) seafood. Umm… who thought this would be a good idea with sirloin steak?

My friends had dorade and paella. Again, the fish and seafood were great quality, but presentation and imagination were clearly missing.

I ate pyjama for dessert. Literally. That’s what it was called. I still have no idea why – perhaps because the presentation on the plate looked like the aftermath of a pyjama party. The ‘dish’ (if you can call it that without the inherent assumption that it had some kind of cohesion and presentation) consisted of half a tinned peach (not sure what happened to the ingredients sourcing at that point!), a scoop each of mango sorbet and probably-caramel ice cream (by far the best bit on the plate) and something calling itself ‘flan’, which was heavier than but similar to crème caramel. Not to mention the endless swirls of cinnamon-dusted squirty cream that popped up all over the plate like extra duvets.

It wasn’t cheap either: my three courses came to €50, not including the wine (house wine is €24 a bottle and the white tastes like something you drank in the park at 17), water (which only comes in bottles) and bread (which apparently you have no choice but to pay for, even though it’s on the table on arrival).

For a restaurant that’s clearly proud of its product sourcing, Ibiza feels like a waste of good ingredients. And the customer’s money.